Fun Kid Snack: Cute Olive Penguins!

My son’s preschool class is studying penguins right now, and it just so happened that it was our job to bring snack this week! After much perusing of the internet and Pinterest, I came up with a pretty easy but cute penguin snack idea. At first I tried using a small slice of mozzarella cheese stick for the belly-almost all kids love cheese sticks, but I wasn’t sure about the cream cheese. They are also three and four year olds, so I couldn’t use toothpicks-which would have made it a TON easier! But here is what preschool kid-friendly penguin snack I came up with:

What you will need:
Large pitted olives (whole)
Carrots-I used baby carrots because that is what we had!
A small amount of cream cheese
Straws cut in half
Knife and cutting board

First of all, keep half of the olives intact for the heads, and slice the others as shown. Roll little bits of cream cheese into circles, these don’t have to be perfect as you will be squishing them into the “belly” of the penguin. Cut out a small slice of carrot as shown. The large part will be the feet and the little triangle will be the nose.

Take a straw and push it through the intact olive with the large opening to the side. Set aside. Squish the ball of cream cheese into the olive that had been sliced and then the olive skewered straw into the cream cheese. Add the little triangle into the hole in the head part and then do your best to push the straw into the carrot feet. My straws weren’t strong enough, so I had to use the cream cheese to sort of adhere the bodies to the feet.

They weren’t all perfect, but they were cute, and twenty one later, my son was absolutely delighted to bring these to his friends at preschool! We will have to set up the feet when we get there, but I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, and my son is so very excited!

Have you ever made “food animals” for your children’s preschool, birthday parties or just for fun? What did you make?