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This blog is here for you to find fun learning activities to do with your children. We share great ideas we find and love on the Internet, as well as ideas we come up with on our own! We also like to share resources we find helpful.

To find ideas for your child, click on the age range blog label or on the theme/topic you are looking for (on the left side of the page). In each post, we try to list optimal age ranges for the activity, but you must judge for yourself if it is appropriate for your child. When you try an activity out, please comment and let us (and everyone else) know how your child liked it!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Feed The Penguin


This is a fun math activity for penguins. 

AGE RANGE
Your child needs to be old enough to be able to count dots and recognize numbers. This will vary greatly from child to child. My 3 year old could do it, as could my 5 year old. 

SKILLS TAUGHT
Counting Skills

PREPARATION
You want to have a penguin with a number on the belly as well as a fish with dots. I Googled "penguin clip art" and choose an image I liked. I then put it into Microsoft Word, copied it 11 times, and ended up with 12 penguins. I then created a text box and typed a number in for each penguin. I made the border and the fill as "no border" and "no fill" so that the box didn't cover up the penguin, then I put the number over each penguin. 

I Googled "fish clip art" and choose a fish that looked like one a penguin would eat. I then copied it and put it into Word and copied it 11 times. I then used the shape tool to draw dots on each fish.

I then printed the documents. I have uploaded two versions of this into my Google Documents. You can click on these Documents for blank Word file of just penguins and just fish. These documents have no numbers and no fish. If you plan to edit, please save it to your computer and edit your own copy. I also saved the exact files I usd in a PDF here:


Then I laminated the pages. I got a laminator for Christmas and I LOVE it. 

I then cut everything out.

ACTIVITY
The idea is to tell your child the penguins are hungry. A number four penguin needs a number four fish to get full. You have your child match the penguins to the fish.

Younger children will do best with starting with numbers 1-5. The higher numbers get hard to count the dots, especially because I made it a little challenging intentionally. That is one reason I provided  you with blank fish so you can make it how you want it. You could also do dots on the penguins and numbers on the fish if you want. 

There are further extensions. If your child needs more of a challenge, you could tell him to feed the penguin two fish to feed it. So a number three penguin would get a two fish and a one fish.

You could also do numbers or dots on the penguins but then just print out blank fish and have  your child feed the penguin the correct number of fish. 


8 comments:

Raegan said...

I love this!!! What a cute idea!

staci said...

When I click on your penguins link it takes me to babycenter.com. Could you fix this? Thanks!

teacherjess said...

What a cute idea!!! i just wish the links to the printables were actually usable!! :)

Valerie Plowman said...

Thanks for letting me know that! I didn't know the links didn't work. I will see if I can fix that today.

Valerie Plowman said...

I updated the "Fish" and "Penguins" links--those definitely work for me. Let me know if they do not work for you

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the resources. It's a brilliant idea.

Kree said...

HI, I know that I am writing 2 years after you posted this, but I would love to be able to access the fish and penguins without the numbers and dots. Is that still possible?
The link to your google drive no longer is active.

Kree said...

Hi, I would love to be able to get a copy of the fish and penguins without the dots and numbers. The link is no longer active.
Is there any way I can find them? Thank you very much!!!

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