Penguins are some of the cutest critters out there, and with their quirky personalities and unique characteristics, they are fascinating for our primary students to learn about . With a variety of fun and engaging penguin activities you can immerse your little learners into the wild world of penguins. Whether you are looking for some penguin science, penguin books or just plain old penguin fun, these penguin activities for the primary classroom have got you covered.
Diving in with Penguins
Year after year my students love learning about penguins. Over the years I put together a fun filled penguin unit for our studies. There are so many fun things you can do with penguins and it’s really easy to hit a variety of subject areas and teaching standards. Each of these penguin activities is a key part of our unit and they have all been classroom tested and student approved. Let’s dive in penguin style!
Let’s Talk Penguins
No, I don’t mean talk like a penguin, although that’s something my students try to do all week. Let’s Talk Penguins is the non-fiction science component to our penguin unit. While most students are familiar with the lovable and popular emperor penguin, they are not so familiar with the other varieties of this special bird. In fact, every year there are multiple students that are just amazed that there is more than one kind of penguin. In this unit we focus on using non-fiction text to learn all about five penguin varieties.
To start, I ask my students to work collaboratively with me to create the whole class Penguin Graphic Organizer. They love being part of the creation process and this anchor chart style graph provides us with a central place to document our learning. All you will need is a large piece of butcher paper, a yard-stick for making lines, and the printed out graph labeling strips provided in the packet.
I also print out individual Penguin Graphic Organizer Charts for my students to complete at the same time. We keep the class chart up on the wall for everyone to see and for students to refer to during our unit as needed. Then students can reference it to complete their own charts too!
Each student will create their own Lets Talk Penguins booklet during our penguin unit. It’s an easy way to keep everything together and for the students to have an amazing resource at the end. We don’t complete the entire packet all at once but pull it out to work on throughout the week. When the booklets are completely finished, the students will have everything from a penguin diagram to penguin poems and so much more.
Here’s just a few of the engaging penguin activities your students can complete with the Let’s Talk Penguins resource:
- Penguin Data Sheets for each penguin type
- Penguin writing activities
- Labeling a Penguin
- Comparing and Contrasting two penguin types
- Penguin Crafts for each type of penguin
- Penguin Research Project
The crafts and writing activities work really well together and make a really cute bulletin board or hallway display. I have seen teachers, parents, and even other students stopping in the hall outside our classroom to learn a little something about penguins on their way to the cafeteria, office or recess.
Penguin Chick and More Penguin Books
Reading books about penguins, both fiction and non-fiction, is a great way to connecting reading skills to this penguin unit. Our reading book includes the story “Penguin Chick” and it is a great starting point. If you don’t use the Journeys curriculum you can find this book at the local library or on Amazon. But, we don’t stop with this one penguin story. Throughout our unit, I like to include in a variety of penguin books to use in our lessons and during our read aloud time. Here’s some great penguins books your students will love:
- Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester
- The Emperor’s Egg by Martin Jenkins
- Penguins! by Gail Gibbons
- If You Were a Penguin by Florence and Wendell Minor
- Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Rick Atwater (makes a great extended read aloud)
- The Trouble with Penguins by Rebecca Jordan-Glum (a new favorite)
This resource is packed full of penguin-focused activities. It makes a great supplement to Penguin Chick and other penguin books. We use penguins to learn and practice a variety of reading and language arts skills. My students love the immersive learning that takes place when everything in our English Language Arts learning focus for the week is aligned with the unit of study.
One penguin book that we read every year is Tacky the Penguin. This Tacky the Penguin book study unit helps us to really dig into this fun fiction penguin story. If you know me, you know I love to start with an anchor chart! We also dig into book related vocabulary to help us better understand what we are reading. The Sequence of Events activity is a favorite. There are also some related Tacky activities that are set-up on Google Slides and SeeSaw. A great way to engage students with technology!
There are a variety no prep activities that are great for centers. But the favorite activity of the unit is the How I Am Like Tacky writing craftivity. Students love taking their own picture and turning themselves into Tacky. It’s a display worthy activity for sure!
Penguin Main Idea
One of our reading focuses during this unit is on finding the main idea penguin style. Students struggle with this concept so I don’t know that you can teach or practice it enough.
The penguin main idea craft is a favorite year after year. After we review this concept, students love to create their own penguin that displays the main idea and two supporting details. They definitely remember the concept more when connected with the craft than they do with a traditional reading passage.
One teacher, Tiffany Gannon from The Lemonade Stand used the Penguin Main Idea resource for some great learning in her classroom. You can read all about it on her blog! Thanks for sharing your classroom Tiffany!
Lots and lots of Adjectives
Another key focus in this unit is on adjectives. After learning about this part of speech, students love using their new words to describe penguins. Not only do they love describing penguins, but they also start describing anything and everything around them. I just love how their vocabulary expands as they try to out do each other’s adjectives.
The students love creating the Penguin adjective book. Here they will describe many different penguin parts and then use the adjectives in a sentence too. Not only does this work on adjectives but it is a great review of the parts of the penguin too.
Penguin Vocabulary
One of my favorite activities is the penguin vocabulary foldable. Not only do students love learning new words, but I love listening to them as they incorporate them in their speaking.
Skills Review Center Activities
This resource also includes a variety of skills review activities that are perfect for literacy centers. Students can work on sight words, the ‘er’ sound and dictionary skills with these fun activities.
Some of my students’ favorite activities from this packet include the Color by Sight Word activities. There are also Roll A Word pages which are so much fun. My kiddos have such a blast rolling dice to find the words to write on their papers.
We all know repetition is the key to learning and with these activities, students are writing their “er” and sight words over and over in an engaging way. It’s this fun repetition that really helps them master these skills.
There are so many other activities and opportunities for hands-on learning in this penguin packet. I like to decorate my classroom walls with all of the colorful pages my students create using these activities. Use all or some of the activities to align with your penguin unit.
Digital Penguin Activities
In this new world of digital education, we have learned even more ways of using technology to our advantage. I know my students absolutely crave any opportunity to use their tablets or computers at home and in the classroom, so I use that to my advantage when developing a unit of study for my kiddos. Google Slides activities and SeeSaw activities have been so helpful during this past year full of eLearning, hybrid learning, and in-person learning. No matter where my students are learning from, they are able to access my instruction digitally.
There are four amazing Google Slides and SeeSaw activities to use in your penguin unit including. Each of these activities is a great extension activity to the unit. The activities help students practice what they have learned and dig a little deeper. Not only do students love using the digital resources, but it gives us an opportunity to work on some technology skills too!
Digital Penguin Activities include . . .
- The Life Cycle and Parts of a Penguin
- Predators of a Penguin
- Types of Penguins Reading Passages, Penguin Height Sorting and Penguin Egg Graphing
- Match the Penguin Words Activities
These digital activities incorporate non-fiction reading, sorting, labeling, graphing, and math into your unit. Lots of aww’s and ooo’s can be heard when we learn about the penguin life cycle and see those adorable chicks hatching.
The students love learning new penguin facts. My students are also surprised at the different heights of penguins, especially when they find out an Emperor Penguin can be taller than they are! There’s lots of digital penguin learning in these four activities. I know your students will have such a wonderful time completing these digital penguin activities.
Penguin Craft Headband Activity
I absolutely love any opportunity to get crafty and so do my students. Nothing gets my kiddos more excited about a project than incorporating some kind of craft into the process. Hats and headbands are such a hit with my younger students. We make them for almost every holiday or special project we do in our classroom. My students always jump at the opportunity to show off their special hats and headbands to anyone and everyone they encounter throughout the day, and they double as a way to get them talking about their learning at the same time.
A penguin craft headband is a great introduction to the lesson or as a culminating event to wrap things up at the end of the week. Did I mention that you can grab this for free!
This project is so super easy and requires little to no prep from you! It’s as easy as printing out the template pages, having students color, cut, and glue them together to create the headbands. You can also copy the templates right onto colored paper too! For the students who are a little older, you can also have them trace the templates onto black and orange construction paper.
Once they’ve made their penguin, students will write a penguin fact and then draw a penguin. These activities area then glued onto the sides or back of the penguin hat. In the past, I have let students to name their penguins too! When we are all done we like to have a penguin parade. We all walk {or waddle} around with our headbands on doing our best penguin impression. These penguin headbands are sure to be a hit for you and your students. Every year, I look forward to this funny and cute headband activity with my class.
Perfect Penguin Packets
There are so many engaging and fun penguin activities for the primary classroom for you to choose from. I know you and your students will have an outstanding time learning all about these unique birds. You can find all of these fun and engaging penguin units in the Emily Education store. Grab one to add to what you already have or grab them all to create one jam-packed and fun-filled penguin unit your students will love! I’ve even included a fun penguin math center that makes a great math activity during your penguin study.
Save these Penguin Activities
There are lots and lots of penguin activities and resources here. Pin this to your favorite classroom Pinterest board so you can come back when you are ready to teach your penguin unit!
