Cute & Easy Penguin Craft for Kids

We need to encourage and cultivate creativity and artistic-ness in kids!! Most kids I know (I have some expertise here as a teacher and mother. Wink face.), LOVE crafting and creating things! Let's keep that going!!

I don't know when you're reading this hub, but I'm writing it in the winter time. In Chicago. It's cold and snowy and we've (both my daughter and my class) been cooped up quite a bit. Crafting is a great way to engage kids' imaginations and to be quite honest, take up time! When kids are bored, bad things can happen.

There are so many ideas out there and many of them are quite simple! Here's one that my assistant teacher found that I absolutely love! The special thing about this craft is that you're using your child's footprint so it can make an excellent keepsake that both you and your child can enjoy.

When you display your kids' artwork, it instills pride in their work as well as a boost to their self-esteem. I love letting my students hang their artwork, and I also hang my daughter's artwork on a Masterpiece Wall I made for her bedroom.

Paint the entire bottom of the child's foot with black acrylic paint.
Firmly press the foot onto the blue construction paper.
The toes will become the bottom of the penguin.

* A Little Foot
* Blue & White Construction Paper
* Black & White Acrylic Paint (preferably washable)
* Paint Brush
* Oval Template
* White, Black & Orange Crayons
* Glue Stick

2. Have the child paint some black wings on either side of the footprint.

3. After the black paint is dry, use an oval template and place it over the black footprint. Then allow the child to paint with white acrylic paint inside the oval.

Though you can certainly do this craft with your own kids, it's something I did with my 4 year old daycare class. My assistant teacher and I had them do it while in centers so we could work with three kids at a time. We used a paper plate for the black paint so kids could access it easily.

Thankfully, we have a sink right in the room, which makes it easy to clean out the brushes.

Hang the artwork to dry.

While it's drying, have the kids draw their penguin's faces. Simply cut out (or have them cut out) a small circle out of white construction paper. Next, have them use crayons to draw two black eyes and an orange beak.

When the paint from the footprint is dry, allow the children to glue the face onto the penguin.

Let your kids draw a background! You can make suggestions or just let them figure it out on their own. I thought snowflakes would be a good idea so they did a bunch of snowflakes, as well as snowmen, clouds and other winter things they could think of. My four year olds are pretty creative so they didn't have any problems with this part of the project.

Again, my kids are 4 so they can do a lot of this on their own. Depending on the age and ability levels of the kids you're working with, you could take the following optional steps:

* Model how to draw the penguin's face and let the kids copy what you did.
* Have them paint their own penguin bellies without an oval template.
* Glue the face on for your child.
* Just cut out the penguin instead of having kids draw backgrounds.

All you really need is paper, paint, crayons, and glue. I happened to have all of these at home, but if I didn't, they are fairly cheap and can be found at craft stores and many grocery stores.

It doesn't take very long, though when we did it at the daycare center, we broke it into two days. We wanted the paint to dry, but the time the kids get for each center isn't very long, so this made sense for us.

I have to give my assistant teacher props for working with the kids on their projects. She did an amazing job and I think they turned out super cute.

When they were finished, I hung all of them up on our bulletin board, complete with snowflake border and a paper snowflake background.

[[NOTE: Penguins can easily be turned into a Valentine's Day craft! Simply change the background and add some pink and red paper hearts!]]