Easy Penguin Craft and Chocolate Chip Cookie Penguin Cake

All about penguins! Who doesn't love these adorable animals?

What you will find in this article:

• Some fun facts about penguins
• Shows you how to make a simple penguin cake
• Shows you how to make an easy penguin craft project with your kids
• Fun facts about Emperor Penguins
• Ideas on how to celebrate penguins and learn more about them

What's black, white, smartly dressed and cute all over? Penguins!

April 25th is World Penguin Day, a day to celebrate and honor one of Antarctica's native animals. This special day is simultaneous with the northward migration of penguins, which occurs yearly around April 25th. This day encourages the "health and conservation of these amazing creatures" (Ian Somerhalder Foundation).

There are seventeen different species of penguins. There are six genera of penguin species currently living today:

1. Aptenodytes
2. Eudyptes
3. Eudyptula
4. Megadyptes
5. Pygoscelis
6. Spheniscus

The seventeen species are:

1. Adelie
2. African
3. Chinstrap
4. Emperor
5. Erect-crested
6. Fiordland
7. Galapagos
8. Gentoo
9. Humboldt
10. King
11. Little
12. Macaroni
13. Magellanic
14. Rockhopper
15. Royal
16. Snares
17. Yellow-eyed

To see more details on these species, visit the article, Kidzone Penguin Facts.

Penguin Awareness Day falls on January 20th.

You need:

• 4-6 tablespoons water
• 3-4 tablespoons cocoa powder
• Vanilla extract
• 1 cup vegetable shortening
• Dash of salt
• Black food coloring
• 4 cups powdered sugar

Instructions:

1. In large mixing bowl, mix water (start with only 3-4 tablespoons), salt, vanilla extract and vegetable shortening using electric mixer until smooth.
2. Add powdered sugar. Mix until smooth.
3. Take out 1 cup of the icing and put in separate bowl.
4. In the large bowl with the first batch of icing, add the cocoa powder. Mix until smooth.
5. Add drops of black food coloring - keep mixing and adding until you get the desired color.
6. Add more water if icing is too thick.

Once cakes are cooled, take them out of pan and ice both of them with chocolate icing.

1. Put the vanilla icing in a piping bag. Pipe an oval for the "belly" of the penguin with the vanilla frosting. Fill the inside with the piping bag, then use a small spatula to carefully smooth out the icing. You can put some coconut shreds on top to give it some texture or if you were like me, use it to cover up any mistakes you made while icing the belly!
2. Cut in half a large marshmallow with a sharp knife. Then, carefully cut a triangle out of each side. Place each "pointy" side facing one another on top of the oval cake for the bow tie. The marshmallow is sticky on your fingers once you cut it, so you may want to use toothpicks to handle placing it onto the cake.
3. For the penguin face, use candy for the eyes and beak. I cut a triangle out of a yellow taffy for the beak and used green M&M's for the eyes since that is the candy we had left over from Easter. You can add wings and feet but I did not, therefore, I covered the surrounding area of the cake with coconut shreds (as snow) to place my penguin in its snowy habitat!

A fun crafting project I made with my little girl this week to celebrate penguins, are these easy toilet paper tube penguins!

All you need are:

• An empty tube of toilet paper
• Black construction paper or other black paper, like tissue paper or wrapping paper to wrap around tubes and to use for bow tie and wings
• Yellow or orange construction paper or other paper you have for feet and beak
• White felt or white paper for belly
• Small pom poms for eyes or small beads or buttons
• Glue paste, glue stick or hot glue gun
• Scissors

1. Measure black paper around toilet paper tubes, then cut the amount you need.
2. Glue the black paper around tube.
3. Cut out an oval with the white felt or white paper. Glue onto belly of penguin.
4. Cut out small bow tie using black paper. Glue at the tip of the top of the belly.
5. Cut out a small triangle with the yellow or orange paper and glue on the face for the beak.
6. Glue eyes using buttons, pom poms or beads.
7. Cut out two long ovals for the wings using the black paper and glue on the sides of penguin.
8. Cut out two small ovals with the yellow or orange paper and glue on the bottom for feet.

Human activity affects all animals in the world, not only penguins. There are several ways that we can help the health and well-being of penguins and all species of animals.

• Conserve energy
• Don't pollute
• Walk, ride your bike, car pool or use public transportation as much as possible
• Use energy-saver appliances and light bulbs
• Recycle, up-cycle, reuse, re-purpose

See more information about penguins and how you can help at AnimalFactGuide.com.

In the popular movie about penguins, Happy Feet, there are three different types of penguins featured. They are the Emperor, Rockhopper and Adelie penguins. The main character, Mumble, from Happy Feet, is an Emperor penguin.

In the video shown here, the Emperor penguins are highlighted.

The Emperor penguin is my favorite type of penguin. Here are some fun facts found at AnimalFactGuide.com that you can share with kids or anyone about these cute and cuddly creatures:

• Emperor penguins are the largest of the seventeen species of penguins, standing at 45 inches tall.
• They can recycle their own body heat.
• They can dive deeper than any other bird - up to 1,850 feet
• Sadly, only a third of juvenile penguins will make it to their first year because they become food to seabirds. Both juveniles and adults are food to leopard seals and killer whales.
• They live an average of 15-20 years in the wild but are threatened more by human activity: warmer temperatures from global warming affects their breeding grounds and their food supply is decreasing from over-fishing (this problem is also shown in the movie, Happy Feet).

Every time I think of a penguin, I think about how sweet and adorable they look because of their waddle. What also comes to mind is a smartly dressed bird attending a fancy party.

Penguins appear to be wearing tuxedos because of their counter shading, which is a type of camouflage for them.

I guess the party part is right because they are social birds, often doing everything in groups: feeding, swimming and nesting. Although they are flightless birds, there are several other things that they are skilled at but they still need our help to get them off the endangered lists. Find out more at Defenders.org. Hope you learned something interesting and new about penguins today!

©BNadyn 2014