With weeks (and weeks) of wintery weather remaining in many parts of the country, many a grandma may be racking her brain for ways to keep grandkids engaged indoors during visits. This easy, peasy penguin activity requiring minimal prep* may cut down on the cabin fever. For a little while, anyway.

*I do recommend you make one yourself first, though, if you’re doing this with toddlers. It provides a sample of the finished product. More importantly, it cuts down on the time the little one must wait and watch … and lose interest while you’re cutting out beaks, feet, and flippers. Which, I must admit, is what went down with Robert (2) when I did this with him and Benjamin (4).

What you need:

plastic water bottle per penguin, empty and dry

cotton balls, the more the better

googly eyes, medium or large

black construction paper

orange construction paper

glue (I prefer glue stick for this but any glue will do)

What you do:

• Provide a pile of cotton balls and let kids fill their bottle.

• While they’re doing that, cut out head, feet, flippers, and beaks, if not previously prepared. I did each part freehand with no template, as it’s pretty simple. Take note of each part in my photos and you’ll (hopefully) agree.

Head: With black construction paper, draw then cut a strip about one inch wide by a length long enough to wrap around the bottle cap with plenty of overlap for gluing.

Flippers: Also with black paper, draw then cut two elongated ovals (with one end cut straight) about half the height of the water bottle, one for each side.

Feet: Also with black, draw then cut two rectangles about 3/4 the width of the water bottle bottom and about a half inch longer than the water bottle. On one longer edge of each rectangle, draw then cut three bumps along the edge. These are the penguin toes. Toes are never perfect, so worry not about making penguin toes perfect.

Beak: Using orange paper, draw then cut an elongated triangle of sorts, ensuring it’s long enough for the straight edge to be folded for a flap for attaching to bottle.

• Tightly attach lid to cotton-filled bottle. Wrap black strip around top to create head, gluing the overlapped end.

• Choose eyes for the penguin — a serious step, as Benjamin demonstrates — then glue to head.

• Attach feet: Test positioning under bottle, overlapping the two black rectangles — with toes sticking out and facing as desired. Glue the rectangles to each other to maintain that position, then glue to bottom of bottle.

• Glue a flipper to each side of bottle.

• Attach the beak by bending back a tab on the straight end of the beak and gluing that tab to the head, beak sticking out.

Voila! The easy peasy penguin is complete!