At a Glance
This printable cut and paste penguin craft helps preschool, kindergarten and other young learners practice 2D shape recognition while building fine motor skills through cutting, assembling and gluing. Children cut out circles, ovals, and a triangle to build their own penguin, making this a simple craft-meets-math activity. Includes color and black and white versions.
Circles. Ovals. One little triangle. Put them all together and suddenly – there’s a cute lil’ penguin looking back at you.
This cut and paste shape penguin craft is a simple, satisfying make for your preschool and kindergarten little ones.
They’ll need to concentrate to carefully cut out the pieces, arrange them properly and glue everything into place to build their very own penguin.
And while their little fingers are so focused on getting that beak just right, they’re sneaking in a solid shape recognition workout too – circles for the eyes and feet, ovals for the body and wings, a triangle for the beak.
Two activities for the price of one!
If your little learners would enjoy some more crafty cutting practice you may want to check out these awesome cut and paste crafts.
What Skills Can Your Little Ones Learn And Develop?
These cut and paste penguin worksheets are designed to help your children practice and develop some early skills, such as:
- Shape – being able to spot and recognize shapes. Naming the pieces as they work – builds the vocabulary and visual recognition that forms the foundation of early geometry.
- Fine Motor Skills – Picking up, moving and carefully placing small pieces develops the precise finger control your little learners will use for writing, drawing and plenty of other tasks.
- Hand-eye coordination – to be able to understand what they are seeing and use their hands to get the scissors to go where they want them to
- Hand dominance – developing and strengthening the skill of one of their hands
- Scissor control – holding the scissors correctly to allow for a fluid range of movement
- Pencil Control – if you print off the black and white version they can practice their pencil control and develop hand strength through coloring.
- Spatial Awareness – Working out where each shape goes (and which way up) requires children to think about position, size and orientation.
- Concentration and Perseverance – Getting it to look just right takes patience.
RELATED Playdough can also be a great way to improve hand strength – you can check out an easy no cook recipe here!
How To Prepare This Penguin Shape Craft
First you’re going to want to download the sheets by clicking on download button at the bottom of the page.
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Then print them off, grab some scissors, glue and a plain piece of paper to stick their picture on to.
They’ll need to carefully cut out all the 2D shapes and place them correctly to make the pictures.
And There’s a Black and White Worksheet as Well:
So they can color in their creation and add some more detail as as well.
Get Even More Out of This Shape Penguin Craft
Don’t put it away just yet – there’s plenty more you can do with this one.
Name It Before You Glue It
Before each piece goes down, ask your little learner to name the shape. “What shape is the beak? What shape is the body? How many ovals did you use?”
It turns the craft into an active shape vocabulary session. You could even sort all the pieces by shape before the gluing starts.
Go on a Shape Hunt
Once the penguin is finished, take the shapes off-page. Head around the room (or the garden, or a walk to the shops) and spot shapes in real life.
“Can you find something oval? Something circular?” Children who’ve just spent time with those shapes in the craft will spot them everywhere – a clock, a wheel, a leaf etc. Real-world connection is great to solidify that shape knowledge!
Penguin on Ice
Add a background to the finished penguin. A sheet of blue or white paper, a handful of cotton wool balls for snow and ice, a few torn strips of white tissue paper – and you’ve got Antarctica – or close at least.
Penguin Puppet
You’ll need to laminate their finished penguin or back it onto card. Then glue it to a craft stick once it’s dry and it becomes an instant puppet.
Works especially well with the black and white version if children have coloured it in themselves – there’s real ownership in a penguin that’s completely theirs.
From there, it’s penguin stories and adventures! Language, vocabulary and storytelling will all follow naturally.
Can You Build Another Animal?
Now that your little learner knows that these shapes can build a penguin, what else could they build? Set out some simple shape cut-outs in different sizes — circles, ovals, rectangles, triangles, squares – and challenge them to make their own creature. There’s no right answer, which is exactly the point. This is open-ended creative thinking.
Letter P Penguin
If you’re working on the alphabet, this craft is a natural hook for the letter P. Say “P is for Penguin” as you build and see if your little one can think of other words that start with a P. A penguin holding a piece of paper with the letter P on it?
However you use this shape penguin craft, I hope you and your little ones enjoy – and let’s nurture those neurons!
