Felt Emperor Penguin Eggs

 We are heavy into our Arctic Animal Research (more on that to come) and just finished watching March of the Penguins - such a great movie!  We also read The Emperor Lays an Egg.  My class was facinated by the fact that the Daddy penguin keeps the egg safe on his feet for several months.  It must be hard to walk around like that!

We decided to give it a try by making our own felt penguin eggs.

 Our egg pattern is not exactly the same shape as an Emperor Penguin egg (I wanted to make sure that the pattern was symmetrical), but it's about the same size - 6 x 4 inches.

 Trace and cut out the pattern from felt two times.  Some kids made white eggs, but most had fun with color.

 Match the eggs up.  If they are really uneven, do a little trimming.

 Start sewing around the egg.  Be sure your stitches are small and close together.  You are going to stuff it and you don't want the egg to crack!  Leave a hole about the size of your thumb.

 Stuff the egg about 1/2 way.

 Add some beans or noodles to give it a little weight.  Please note that the beans I used proved to be too small and fell through holes which resulted in beans all around my classroom.  You can imagine the mess, can't you?  So, use lima beans or big noodles for this.  The weight in the eggs did help when walking.

 Add more stuffing so it's all filled up.  Sew up the hole in the egg.

Have some fun!  We waddled around, but that was very, very hard.  Waddling with the eggs on our head was more our speed.  We also had an egg toss, but we wouldn't try that with a real penguin egg!