Penguin Learning Activities for Kids

After talking about Antarctica the other day, it got me thinking about activities involving animals that live in cold climates. So today we’re taking a look at penguin learning activities.

To begin with the basics, Living Life and Learning has printables for the parts of a penguin and the life cycle of a penguin for kids to fill out.

Homeschool Preschool has a cute counting penguins printable book for kids to use to practice counting and writing numbers up to 20, while Life Over C’s has penguin number mats for counting 1-10 and a penguin-themed hundreds chart.

Work simple word problems with penguins and fish while using a printable of a penguin and fish with this activity from Natalie Lynn Kindergarten. The word problems involve subtraction, but you can print the penguin without the words and use them for addition as well.

Or you can feed the penguin with this printable dice rolling game from Hello Wonderful. It’s shown using Goldfish crackers but you can use pompoms or other markers as the “food” if you don’t want to use real food in this activity.

123 Homeschool 4 Me has a free 74-page printable full of penguin related activities, including three-part cards, letter tracing, life cycle pages, match activities and tons more.

Speaking of three-part cards, 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1 has some pretty free printable cards with different species of penguins.

Work on letter recognition and beginning sounds with this penguin alphabet printable set from Stay at Home Educator.

The penguin emotions cards from Natural Beach Living are a great way to work in some social-emotional learning. And don’t forget art! Learn how to draw a penguin with Kids Activities Blog.

Looking for some penguin-themed books? The National Geographic Readers book on penguins is a great factual book about penguins, but there are lots of fun picture books with a penguin theme like If You Were a Penguin and How Do Penguins Play? And of course there’s Mr. Popper’s Penguins, too!

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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