Penguins at Play November 1-4

We went way down south to Antarctica to play with the penguins that live there.

We loved reading about Tacky the penguin and his good friends Angel, Lovely, Neatly and Perfect. Two of our favorites were Tacky the Penguin and Tacky in Trouble by Helen Lester.

Penguins are birds, but they can’t fly. They spend much of their lives at sea, yet they breed on land or sea-ice attached to land.

To the tune of "I’m a Little Teapot", we sang:

I’m a little penguin black and white

I waddle to the left and I waddle to the right.

I can’t fly but I can swim

I waddle to the water and jump right in!

Some penguin species can dive to depths of 1000 feet or more and can stay submerged for up to 25 minutes! We practiced "diving" and then pretended to swim like penguins in the coldest ocean in the world.

In our water play, we had icebergs and really cold water to represent the Antarctic Ocean. We played with penguins. They swam in the ice cold water and jumped off ice bergs and floes.

They travel on the land by sliding down hills of snow on their bellies. We practiced sliding down the slide on our bellies.

As soon as a penguin egg is laid, the mommy leaves to get some food and the penguin daddy is responsible for keeping the egg warm. He carries the egg on his feet and in his brood pouch. We tried waddling around with a beanbag egg on our feet. It was hard work to keep the egg on our feet without it sliding off.

After the egg hatches, to keep the baby from freezing, the baby penguin is carried around on the feet of the mommy and daddy penguins. We tried carrying a baby penguin between our feet.

Penquins are black on their backs and heads and white on their fronts. The black blends in with the dark ocean depths and the white blends in with the lighter water surface. We gave penguin shapes their own personalities by painting with snow paint- Ivory Snow mixed with white paint. 

 

We used our handprints to give our penguins waddling, webbed feet.

The land of Antarctica is filled with ice. We used frozen ice mixed with paint to create a brilliantly colored masterpiece. 

We jumped from ice floe to ice floe to catch fish we found in the ocean. A penguin's diet consists of fish. We pretended to be penguins as we played "Go Fish". 

It was a great place to visit and we loved playing with the penguins, but we wouldn't want to live there!