Make a super cute, squishy, stuffed paper penguin from recycled paper plus our free template.
This is a great recycling craft for kids with Earth Day coming up.
You might also like our Winter Paper Craft collection
Last week we shared a pom pom penguin based on the Gentoo species. Today I have a new penguin craft from another species commonly found in the sub-Antarctic regions of our amazing planet—the Macaroni Pengion. Yep, named after the pasta.
These are the guys and gals with orange beaks and yellow crests. They’re a large species in real life, reaching up to 86cm in height (34″)—that’s more than twice the height of our grocery bag sized penguin!
The finished penguin is squishable with a crinkly newspaper crunch inside so it’s a fun sensory experience for kids.
To make him, I’ve used a recycled grocery bag and stuffed it with newspaper. I found brown supermarket bags perfect for making the penguin’s body because they’re made of relatively tough paper. You could replace this with decent-quality classroom art paper if you’re crafting with a large group of kids and don’t have enough recyclables on hand.
Use the printable template to create the facial features and feet and also to get the body and wing shapes.
This is an easy craft, but there are multiple steps and drying time involved. I’d recommend this project for kids aged 7+ for this reason. Younger kids could make it too with adult help and over multiple crafting sessions though.
How to make a stuffed paper penguin
You will need:
- A large recycled paper grocery bag — you could substitute with an alternative tough kind of recycled paper or regular classroom art paper
- A sheet of newspaper that has mostly text on it (the horse racing section was perfect, or a large, long article with few pictures)
- More newspaper for stuffing
- Black acrylic paint
- A glue stick
- A stapler
- A paintbrush
- The printable template. This is free to download when you subscribe to our newsletter via the form below.
How to
Cut your grocery bag into panels. To make one penguin, you will need the front, back and one side panel. If there are handles, gently pull them off, or snip them as short as possible if you’re afraid of tearing the paper.
Paint the panels black. For the large pieces, cover most of the sheet. For the side panel, you only need to cover enough to make two wings. That’s approximately half of the panel. I’ve used professional acrylic for mine, so one coat of black is opaque and easily covers the supermarket logo. With kids’ paints, they are often more washable and less opaque, so you may need to paint two coats to get an opaque finish.
While that dries, make the feet and beak from our printable template.
Cut all the parts out. For the feet and beak, cut around the outer rectangle. Fold in half, glue, then cut around the shape of the beak or foot on the front. You’ll be left with a double-sided part.
Staple the wing and tummy template to a sheet of newsprint. Cut the shapes out.
Once the paint on your grocery bag panels has dried, Glue the newsprint wings to the unpainted side of the side panel. Cut them out. You will have two wings with black on one side and newsprint on the other.
Cut the oval template out, then trace this onto the unpainted side of each large panel. Cut it out.
Now it’s time to assemble your penguin!
Glue the stomach, beak and eyes to the black side of one panel.
On the reverse of the other panel, attach the wings, feet and yellow tufts of crest with a glue stick. Then staple the front to the back, leaving a gap at the top half so you can stuff your penguin.
Now stuff it!
Staple the penguin closed and you’re done!
Now squish his tum to get that satisfying crinkly noise!
More Recycled crafts ideas
- Here are a cute pair of paper roll dinosaurs
- Make a set of recycled mason jar lanterns for Earth Day
- Turn jar lids into mini banjos
- This egg carton train is a hit with preschoolers
