If you are looking for an expressive, easy and impressive penguin art project, look no further! These adorable penguins are quite easy to complete in two, 40-minute sessions and use simple art supplies. I’ve seen so many adorable penguin art projects, but my favorite are these. Thank you Mountain Color!
To start, paint a 12″ x 18″ white sulphite paper with puck tempera paints. I use puck tempera paint purely for the ease of prep. You can set the palettes on the table and whisk them off after the lesson is done…no cleaning or wasting paints. I asked the children to create a colorful background for the penguins but didn’t give them any guidelines other than they could use as many or a little paint colors as they liked. In my demonstration, I used all the paint colors and paint horizontal stripes, so many children copied me, but many children created dots, patterns, full colors, etc.
To make the penguin, I gave each student a piece of black and white sulphite paper. I showed the children how to make a large letter “U” on the back of the black paper. I cut it out and made a smaller letter “U” on the white paper. Cut out the white paper and place white paper on black paper. For the wings, I showed the children how to fold a piece of black paper in half and draw a skinny letter “D”. They cut the double paper out for the two wings.
On the second day of this lesson, the children drew an iceberg on white sulphite paper using a blue chalk pastel. They cut the iceberg out and glued it to the colorful background. Once the iceberg is in place, the penguin can find it’s home on the iceberg.
Now comes the truly FUN part: decorating!
I set out scrap paper, scraps of burlap, buttons, oil pastels, yarn and palettes of white paint and q-tips. The children made hats, mitts, snowflakes, purses, scarves and all sorts of wonderfully creative things. It’s so rewarding to walk around the art room and see busy little hands and happy faces. I couldn’t believe (honestly) that the children were able to complete this project in time, but they did. After thinking about it, I decided that because the skills required were not too challenging and because the project was quite simple to start and fun to finish, the children never lost concentration.
I hope you give this one a try…it’s a keeper!!! Aren’t my first graders an artistic bunch?
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These are so cute. I’m wondering if my 3 year old could do it. Maybe with a lot of help. It would still be a fun project to do with him. He loves when we do crafts. He always carries them around for the next few days showing everyone he sees.
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This would be a fun project with your little guy…perhaps give him 2 or 3 colors to paint the background and then he could hep glue the bits and pieces to his penguin. Have fun!
Hi Patty,
I am a high school science teacher, and I really enjoy reading your blog. I use Google Reader to subscribe, and I noticed sometime in the past 2 weeks or so, it seems like you switched formats. I can’t read the whole post in Reader anymore, but I have to click over to your website to see the “full post” and I was just wondering why you changed the format and if you have any plans to change it back? I really dislike it this way.
Thanks for all the great lessons and art projects! It’s been great reading
Meredith Kaur
Hi Meredith,
I switched over to truncating my RSS feeds for many reasons, but mostly to protect my content. Many blogs are opting to do this. I’m sorry you don’t like having to click to my blog but I probably won’t change it. I put so much work into my blog and offer so many free posts and resources that I do prefer people read my blog on my site rather than never clicking through. I know that I personally prefer truncated posts as it takes me much less time to scroll through my reader and click through to the posts I really want to read, instead of scrolling through hundreds of full posts and photos.
Thanks for voicing your opinions though. I appreciate the feedback.
I understand. It’s a real shame you have to worry at all about your content. It’s such an awful thing to think about people ripping you off. Well I’m still subscribed so I may be reading less, but we’ll see. Thanks for sharing your opinions as well.
Thanks for all the great lessons, even this science teacher has learned a few things
Meredith
Those penguins are adorable. Makes me want to go read “Tacky!” The collage bits really add a lot of character.
PS- I fully support your decision to truncate your blog in feeds. It used to annoy me but in the past months I’ve learned a little more about “pirate” blogs that steal and republish content. Not cool at all. A click through is certainly worth all the goodness at DSS!!
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Oh, thanks for saying that Susan! There is so much more to blogging that meets the eye nowadays. Blogging used to be so easy but now everything needs to be protected.
Hi Patty
These are so wonderful! The colored background is a fabulous backdrop. The penguin decorations are adorable. Love that it only takes two classes (and uses tempera cakes!).
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Very impressive! Those penguins are really cute and I love the way it was being made.
I love it so much cos there are some methods on how to do it. Thanks!
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I love these! The contrast between the background and the penguin is spectacular. I especially love how I could use this to get rid of some of my old wallpaper samples!
These are just adorable! I’m going to try them in my kindergarten class this month. We may have to simplify them a little sincer we have a half day program but I know they will just LOVE the bright, funky penguins!! Reminds me of my bright, funky kinders!
I plan to do this with my first graders. Love it!
Thank you so much for this adorable art project! My firsties are going to do them in Art Station this week and I am so excited to see what they come up with! I’m going to have them all paint their background tomorrow morning when they first come in so they’ll be dry for whatever day they go to art station. This is just perfect for our penguin theme this week!! THANKS!!!
Thank you so much for this site! I am my son’s 1st grade art docent with more “crafty” than art experience. I’ve used two of your projects so far, and will be doing these adorable penguins this Friday. I only have one day, so I’ll be using pastels instead of paint, but I think the impact will still be there. Again, thank you for your generous website. I’m excited to see what the littles come up with…