Foot Print Penguins

{Foot Print Penguin by Mia, Age 5}

Know any kids with "happy feet?" If so, this project is perfect. You can do this with toddlers on up, provided that you are willing to do all of the work for young children. It's cute and not at all complicated, so what more could you ask for? I found this craft idea on Pinterest, and made a couple of small changes (black ink instead of paint and orange puffy paint for the beaks).

Materials:

• paper
• black ink
• black paint
• white paint
• paint brushes
• Styrofoam tray (or plate/bowl to hold paint)
• orange puffy paint
• 2 googly eyes
• glue
• newspaper (to protect work surface)
• damp cloth/paper towel/baby wipes for clean-up

Directions:

1. Spread newspaper on your kitchen floor (or other area you feel is okay for working). Lay a piece of paper down on top of the newspaper. (We used plain white computer paper.) Have your child sit in a chair by the paper. Using a black ink pad, cover the surface of his/her foot with ink. (You can also use black paint, but I decided to try this with ink to make it a bit simpler.) Help your child to step down from the chair directly onto the paper. Carefully lift foot off of paper, clean up the bottom of the foot, and set paper aside so ink can dry. If making more than one penguin, repeat step 1 as many times as desired.
2. Once the ink (or paint) is dry, use white paint (We used recycled Styrofoam trays from meat packaging as our paint palette.) to make the face and tummy of the penguin. For the head, I started with a heart shape for each penguin. Mia was able to do the rest herself, but I did all of Logan's painting. (This was after I gave him the white paint and let him have at it, which ended up being that he covered all of the black foot print with white paint and made what I called an "invisible penguin" since it was on white paper, so please note that you can't really expect a 3 year old to be able to do this on his own.)
3. Now, use black paint for the flippers. Allow paint to dry.
4. Glue two googly eyes to the head. (That's the part that Logan did.) Make a triangular beak out of orange puffy paint (or regular paint if you don't have puffy paint). Allow puffy paint to dry. (This may take overnight.)
5. Your penguin is now ready to be displayed. You can frame it and give it as a Christmas gift, turn it into a card, mount it on colored paper (I am thinking of using red card stock) or just hang it on the refrigerator. Enjoy.

{Foot Print Penguin by Logan, Age 3, with lots of help from Mama}