Welcome!, Welcome!, Welcome!,
to the first ever FumblingThrough Penguin Day(s) celebration!
To review & finish up our penguin studies, we treated ourselves to some outdoor fun, penguin-style!
Here’s our lineup of events:
We started off our races with the “Emperor Penguin Waddle”. The boys raced a short course while carrying “eggs” between their knees. If they dropped the “egg” they had to take 2 steps backwards before they could continue.
I also gave them the task of transferring a number of “eggs” from one basket to another by working as a team and using only their tummies. They enjoyed this a bit less than the other games, but I liked it plenty for them. So many joys, frustrations, and lessons to be learned by having to work together with a younger sibling ;)
Next up we had the “Rockhopper Hop”. I gave each boy 2 kitchen towel “rocks” and challenged them to cross the yard without touching the ground. They hopped from “rock” to “rock” after moving the previous “rock” from behind them to in front of them. Mama also participated in this race a few times and I can attest to the fact that it’s more exhausting than you’d think!
This next race was one that the boys made up themselves. We named it the “Ice Sheet Shuffle”. The boys pretended that their towels were ice blocks that they were trying to stay on top of as they crossed the water. They had tons of fun with it!
Due to rain we had to postpone our grand finale obstacle course until another day, hence the clothing changes. I had also intended to put up some white, black, and orange streamers to make it more festive, so just pretend you see those in the photos below ;) I do have 4 kids to educate and care for and, honestly, cuteness often gets pushed down the list of priorities. Smiles, on the other hand, are always a priority!
A few photos from our “Penguin Dash” Obstacle Course:
…and I set up a math table with our “Feed the Penguin” boxes.
As you can see, we used things we had around the house to make our obstacle course. So simple, so fun, and a great way to burn off excess energy! The colorful “bumps” are these from Amazon
and the cones are just your standard orange cones
, faded from lots of good use, but still going strong. We use both of these items for all sorts of games.
and the cones are just your standard orange cones, faded from lots of good use, but still going strong. We use both of these items for all sorts of games.
While I’m at it, I also wanted to give a grateful shout-out to Busch Gardens: Seaworld! We were able to visit one of their parks during this study and let the boys get up close and personal with some real live penguins. We took advantage of a Busch Gardens program called Waves of Honor, through which military families can get up to 4 free tickets to one of their parks each year. Together time can be scarce for military families and this particular family was very thankful to have been able to share this fun day together!
Check out some of our other polar activities here:
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. You only need one sheet of paper (or cardstock), a few cuts, a little folding, and a bit of tape to make each box. My 3 year-old used his for counting, My 5 year-old addition, and my 7 year-old multiplication. We fed our penguins goldfish, of course! 
to the penguin’s chest, so you can choose to print with or without that. 
as the base material, and added metal and plastic spoons, colored flat marbles, a couple of animals from our 
, the globe from the top of the Toob packaging, some test tubes & mini petri dishes that we'd used before, and some small winter themed tubs. 
book as a reference for his drawing.
by Seymour Simon
