Playing With Words 365

Educating, inspiring, and empowering parents & professionals in supporting young children's overall development

Freebie Friday: Penguin Memory/Describing Cards

by Filed Under: Freebie Friday, Games, Language Enrichment Activities for Parents, Therapy Ideas and Activities 36 Comments

Well, after quite a blogging break, I am so happy to be back this week and so excited to share with you all my freebie today!

Free Printable Penguin Memory and Describing Cards

This month, we are focussing on both winter activities and Chinese New Year activities. So in the spirit of winter, I created these Penguin Cards. There are 20 different pairs of penguins on 40 individual playing cards. These cards are awesome because they can be used in so many different ways to target so many different skills. They also can be used for children as young as two, and up through the upper elementary years (or even higher if you work with middle school or high school children with more severe learning delays).

How to Prepare the Penguin Cards: You print out all four pages on thick card stock, and cut out the individual cards. Laminate them for durability. It is important that the card stock is think, so that the pictures do not show through to the other side (i.e. see-through). Two other options to solve this problem is to print on white paper, cut out and paste to a darker color card stock, then laminate, OR you could also print them out on sticker paper, cut them out, and stick them to card stock before laminating. (And, if you are not planning to use these over and over, you could get away with not laminating them!).

What Skills You Can Target: This is the best part…there are SO many possibilities! Here are a few:

  • Same/Different
  • Vocabulary
  • Articulation
  • Grammar/Syntax
  • Basic Concepts
  • Describing skills
  • Asking “wh” questions
  • Answering “wh” questions

How to Use the Penguin Cards: Again, there are SO many things you can do with these! Here are some ideas:

  • Memory: Placing all cards face down on a table and taking turns trying to find matches
  • “Go Fish” except rather that just asking for “the penguin” (because that just wouldn’t work, would it??) have your child/student describe the cards when trying to ask for a card. For example “Do you have the penguin who is holding the two bells?”
  • “I Spy” Put out all the cards in front of you and play I Spy… “I spy a penguin ice skating” and then the first child who finds the card gets to keep it.
  • Go Fishing:Place a paperclip on each card. Place the cards in a box and have the children use a fishing pole with a magnet on the end of the string (these can be bought at dollar stores or toy stores, or you can make one from dowel, string, and a magnet) to “fish” out cards. Have the children try to “fish” for the matching cards!
  • Flashlight Hide and Seek: Hide the cards all over a room/house and have your child/children go “seek” for the cards…it’s more fun if you can make it a little dark and use flashlights! See who can find the most matching cards.
  • Charades: Put the cards in a pile. Have the children pick a card and act out what the penguin is doing on the card. Some of these might be hard…so you could have the second set of cards displayed to help the guessers out.
  • Pictionary: Put the cards in a pile. Have the children pick a card and draw what the penguin is doing in the picture.
  • Twenty Questions: To help work on question asking, you can play a game of twenty questions. Separate the cards into two decks. Lay out one deck on a table, face up so you can see all the penguins. Then have the other deck in a pile. Have a child/student pick a penguin from the pile, and have the other child/children ask questions to try to determine which penguin the child is holding. The “askers” can use the penguin pictures on the table to help guide their questions, and if they are sure the person does not have a particular penguin, they can flip the card over (like in the Guess Who game).

I hope you enjoy this freebie! You can download these cards HERE. If you use these please let me know, I LOVE to hear feedback…especially other ideas on how to use things!

About Katie

Katie is a licensed, credentialed and certified pediatric speech-language pathologist and mom to four (8, 6, 3 and 6 months). Her passion for educating, inspiring and empowering parents of children with all abilities led her to start her blog playing with words 365 where she shares information about speech & language development & intervention strategies, parenting, photography and a little about her family life too. Katie has been working in the field of speech pathology for 12 years and is certified in The Hanen Centre’s It Takes Two to Talk ® and Target Word ® programs and holds a certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). In addition to blogging and being a mommy, Katie works part time in her small private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

Comments

  2. Mary Pepper says

    I love your penguin pics, but could not download them 🙁 Everytime I tried to click on the pdf link, it closed my program.

    Reply

  7. Beth says

    Thanks so much for sharing with everyone! Who wouldnt’ love a fun game with cute penguins!! Thanks for all the suggestions on how to use them too =-) Thanks for linking up to TGIF & have a GREAT week,
    Beth =-)

    Reply

  12. Constance A. says

    Katie,
    These are great! I am a sped teacher. I am working on lieteracy bags for my students to take home and practice skills with their parents. One of my themes is penguins. Lots of my students have speech deficits. This is an excellent way to help parents build their speech skills at home. Thanks

    Reply

  18. Gwendolyn says

    Thank you so much for this Freebie. I appreciate any free things as I am in a classified position for Kindergarten and am trying to set up Centers around themes and this fits in perfectly for my Penguin activities and so versatile too!

    Reply

  19. Sharon Davis Bardy says

    Useful and cute penguin cards! I find your explanations and examples very helpful to use with parents. Telling about these strategies through another pair of eyes lets me more securely embed these skills in parents for their babies and toddlers. And yes bottom line is to have FUN with your little ones.
    Sharon, Speech-Language Pathologist in CA,
    with the past 16 years with Early Start out of 40 years of experience

    Reply

  20. Jan says

    I can’t install your resource. I get as far as ‘run’ and an exclamation mark pops up. This is a real shame as it looks good.

    Reply

  21. Mikaela Millington says

    Hi Katie!

    I am also having an issue with downloading the Freebie Friday Penguin theme! Could you please forward it to my email? Thank you so much 🙂

    Happy Holidays!

    Mikaela

    Reply

  22. Marie says

    Katie, I want to thank you for your wonderful resources. I am a SLPA and have used your resources and advice throughout the year. Keep up the excellent work

    Reply

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