Penguin Sandwich

This is a very simple snack.  I like cute food, but I am certainly not one of those people who can make elaborate and beautiful foods.  I like to keep it simple!

I began by using a circle cookie cutter to cut a piece of bread.  You could also use a glass to cut the circle shape.

I covered that circle with tiny trapeze all natural marshmallow creme.  It's like Fluff, but from Whole Foods.

Then I cut another circle out of bread, covered that in chocolate hazelnut spread (like Nutella) and cut the circle in half to make wings.

A peppermint patty became the head, and I used icing to make the eyes, beak, and feet.

Penguin Day by Victoria Winteringham is a fun picture book that follows a colony of penguins from dawn to dusk.  We especially like the silly illustrations of penguins doing laundry, bathing, and making art!!!

Oreo Penguins

My kids love Oreo cookies, and they are the obvious cookie of choice for making penguins!  To make this snack, I first twisted apart an Oreo cookie.  I placed the cookie side with the most filling on the plate and cut the other side of the cookie in half to make the wings.  I used a mini Oreo for the head and stuck it in place with icing.  The eyes are white icing with Oreo crumb pupils, and the beak and feet are also icing.  The blue footed penguins were made because there is a blue footed penguin in one of our favorite penguin books - 365 Penguins.

Here are a few penguin books that we like:

 Penguin Day by Victoria Winteringham is a fun picture book that follows a colony of penguins from dawn to dusk.  We especially like the silly illustrations of penguins doing laundry, bathing, and making art!!!

365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental and Joelle Jolivet is cute and it offers a good amount of math fun!  On the first day of the new year, the mailman delivers a penguin to a family.  Well, day after day the penguins keep coming and the family has no idea who is sending them or why.  The family, obviously, runs into a few problems feeding and caring for the penguins.  On New Year's Eve, the family discovers that all of the penguins were sent by their uncle, the ecologist.  He explains that the planet is heating up and the penguins territory is getting smaller, so he was hoping to introduce them to the North Pole, but due to exporting restrictions, he was forced to send one penguin a day to the family.  

Penguin Dreams by V.L. Walsh - a cute book about a penguin with big dreams.  

 Antarctic Antics:  A Book of Penguin Poems by Judy Sierra - a fun collection of poems in which the author imagines life in the Antarctic through the eyes of the chicks in an emperor penguin colony.

Penguin Pairs:  Counting by 2s by Amanda Doering Tourville - count by 2s adding up the penguins as you go along.  This book is part of a series called "Count the Critters".  The other books in the series feature odd or even numbers, counting by 3s, and more.  

Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester- this is a great book about a penguin who is a bit odd, but his oddities pay off in the end.  This is a good book to use for teaching tolerance or individuality.

Do you have a favorite penguin book?  

I am linking to Read Explore Learn and  What My Child is Reading at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.  
Hop on over there to find out what others are reading and learning!