Paper Tube Penguin Family

In today's story, we heard about two penguin dads, Roy and Silo, who adopted an egg to raise together. That egg hatched into Tango, a baby penguin! Let's gather up some recycled materials and create our own penguin family with a "hatching" baby penguin.

-two toilet paper tubes

-an egg carton

-markers

-construction paper

-scissors

-glue

-pencil

Lay out your black paper, the shorter side towards you. (That is, if you're using black! Most penguins have black feathers, but they're your penguins; you can make them whatever color you want.) Lay one of your tubes down in the bottom corner of your paper, and make a mark at the end of the tube.

Use a straight edge to trace a line from that mark to the other end of the paper. I used the lid of my marker box, since it was right there and I am lazy, but if you have a ruler, that'll work even better.

Cut along the line so that you have a strip of paper the width of your toilet paper tube.

Cut the strip of paper in half. Cover one of the halves in glue, and wrap it around one of the tubes. Add a line of glue under the overlapping edge of the paper. Squeeze it together, and rub at it so the glue sticks really well.

Repeat with the second tube.

Sketch out a penguin belly shape on a piece of white paper. I set one of my tubes next to it so I could eyeball a good relative size for the belly. I also drew two small circles to be the eyes.

After I drew them, I folded the paper in half so that I could cut out two sets of the shapes, one set for each penguin!

Take some of the black paper left over from cutting out the penguins' bodies, and draw two wing shapes. Fold the paper in half so that you can cut four wings. Cut out two small triangles for beaks. I happened to have some orange construction paper, but you could also draw two triangles with an orange or yellow marker on a piece of white paper and cut them out. I also drew pupils on the eyeballs.

Put a generous coating of glue on each piece and stick them onto your tubes. If you fold the ends of the wings up, and just put glue on the tabs, then the wings can flap!

Draw an upside-down heart shape with a rectangle on top. Fold your paper in half so you can cut two. Fold up the rectangle on each pair of feet to make a tab. Put glue on the side of the tab that faces you. Stick the glue side down on the inside of the tube, facing the belly of the penguin. Repeat on the second penguin. Now your penguins have feet!

It's easiest to cut egg cartons if you start the cut by inserting one blade of your scissors into the hole at the top. Cut out two cells. Trim around both of them, but trim one half again as short as the other.

Take the smaller of the two egg carton cells and draw wings, eyes, and a beak on it with your markers.

Set the larger egg carton cell on top of your baby penguin. Now the baby penguin is in its egg! The penguin dads can take turns sitting on the egg. When the baby is ready to "hatch," you can just flip up the "eggshell."

Have fun with your little family! What will you name them all?