Place Mats
Penguin Place Mat!
Who doesn’t like penguins? This penguin place mat craft could easily be turned into a plain old paper craft with white paper instead of a paper towel. You can find contact paper almost anywhere these days, both Walmart and Target carry it in my neck of the woods and of course the big craft stores do too! We use these place mats for play dough, crafts and yes dinner time too. Putting out the place mats for dinner is my son’s job so making something new and fun is a great way to keep it fresh!
- Gather your materials you will need 1 sheet of black construction paper, a sheet of paper towel ( paper will work too),contact paper, some glue, silver and blue sequins, 2 googly eyes, an orange marker, scissors and some white construction paper.
- Start by drawing an outline of a penguin with the marker on the black paper.
- Cut out and glue onto the paper towel.
- Add glue for the sequins.
- Add the snow – the sequins! This is awesome for fine tuning those fine motor skills. Those sequins are tricky.
- We had no orange paper so instead I had my son color this white piece to use for the beak and feet.
- Next cut out the beak and feet from the colored paper.
- Add the eyes.
- Add the beak and feet.
- Let dry - I didn’t because daylight and my ability for ok photos was fading fast in my cloudy sky town! But you will want to to avoid globs of glue stuck under contact paper.
- Measure your contact paper to fit – you will want to sandwich the place mat between 2 sides of a long rectangular piece. Peel back only half the backing , place the place mat face down on the sticky side. Doing it this way will prevent big bubbles and wrinkles on the front.
- Peel the rest of the backing off the contact paper and press to sandwich the place mat. Press firmly to seal.
- Trim the edges and voila!
Books !
Tacky the Penguin 
Penguin Dreams
- Gather your materials. You will need a piece of paper towel, some red, white and blue paper, a star paper punch, scissors, glue and contact paper.
- Start by cutting your blue paper into a square that takes up almost a quarter of the upper left corner of your paper towel.
- Cut your red paper into stripes, some long, some short.
- Punch stars out of your white paper
- Add glue to your blue
- Add the stars
- Add glue for the stripes and start adding them.
- Let dry ( do not skip this step, you’ll get squished glue marks like me, learn from my oops).
- Cover with contact paper. The way that works best I think is to place on piece of contact paper on your table , lay the flag face down so there are no bubbles, then sandwich it with another piece. Press hard and trim.
” How to Make an Apple Pie and see the world” by Marjorie Priceman cost me a total of 15 cents at a thrift store. It is worth so much more than that. This book is a gem! Perfect for older preschoolers who are getting a sense of the world beyond their own home and city, this book takes you on a ride around the world! You follow the little girl to Italy, France , Sri Lanka, England, Jamaica and back to Vermont! As soon as I read this my mind was racing with classroom activities ! I will be posting some soon. I LOVE this book, I just wish I had read it when I was still teaching it would have been so much fun to teach geography with!
“How to Make a Cherry Pie and see the USA” by Marjorie Priceman didn’t disappoint one bit. I was worried after falling in love with the previous book that this couldn’t live up to my expectations. It did! This time she wasn’t looking for ingredients for the pie, but rather materials for her tools. She gathered wood in Washington for her rolling pin, cotton in Louisiana for pot holders granite in New Hampshire for her pastry slab and more. What I wasn’t expecting of this book and loved was how she gathered natural resources and then processed them to make what she needed. I think this is a wonderful lesson about manufacturing and could be used for a launchpad for learning about so much more. Another gem I will be adding to my must buy list.
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- Gather your materials. You will need paper towels, markers, and contact paper. Oh and if you have them pinking shears or other shaped scissors make a great detail .
- Give your child a section of paper towel. What I love about this is I am the world’s worst straight line cutter, the paper towels are perfectly cut already.
- If your child is old enough to “get it” show them how if they leave the marker on the paper towel it absorbs the ink and makes a bigger mark.
- Cut the contact paper to size before peeling the backing off, then peel only half and add the place mat face down.
- Cover and press. Trim the edges with pinking shears if you have them.
- Now you are ready for the toddler spills at Thanksgiving dinner !
I am off to the library today, my home library is sorely short on Thanksgiving books, I will be finding some as well as a new batch of counting books to review!
- Gather your materials. You will need some construction paper or card stock, some glue, scissors, crayons and contact paper.
- Have your child color , write their name, draw a picture whatever they want on a light color paper.
- While they are doing that you can cut out some shapes using another piece of paper , or if your child is able you can have them do this step as well.
- Glue the shapes to the paper,
for young toddlers I would suggest putting small drops of glue on the paper and having them put the shapes on them.
- Cut a large enough piece of contact paper to fold over the place mat.
- Place the drawing/ collage on another piece of paper to use as a backing.
- Place both pieces face down on the first half of the contact paper, then fold the rest over. You want to do it face down to avoid big bubbles on the front of the place mat.
- Trim and you are good to go!!
Books!
” Mmmm, Cookies!” by Robert Munsch is a silly story about a boy who makes cookies out of playdough and tricks people into eating them, and their revenge. The story itself isn’t extraordinary but the way that the actions in the story are coupled with sounds keeps even the most uninterested reader turning the pages!
” If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” by Laura Joffe Numeroff is a fun story about a demanding mouse and the consequences of giving into his whims! The illustrations by Felicia Bond have adorable details and compliment the simple but entertaining story perfectly. I like to use this book while teaching sequencing, and after reading it ask the children ” Well what happened next?” .
