Penguin Facts: Emperor Penguins, Huddles and Life in Antarctica

Penguins are flightless birds, but they are superb swimmers that use their wings as flippers to chase fish underwater. This puzzle follows the emperor penguin, the largest of all, through the Antarctic winter: living in huge colonies on the ice among the icebergs, and huddling together by the thousands to survive temperatures far below zero.

With only eight words, it is a short medium puzzle, but half of them hide on diagonals or read backwards. Flightless, at 10 letters, runs straight down.

Penguin Vocabulary: 8 Words to Find

Words run across, up and down, and diagonally; 3 of the 8 read backwards. The longest word is Flightless, with 10 letters.

Antarctic: The icy region around the South Pole, home of the emperor penguin.
Colony: A large group of animals living together, like penguins on the ice or ants in a nest.
Emperor: The emperor penguin, the largest penguin, which breeds on the Antarctic ice in the middle of winter.
Fish: The main food of penguins, which catch them underwater.
Flightless: Unable to fly. Penguins, ostriches and kiwis are flightless birds.
Huddle: To crowd closely together for warmth, as emperor penguins do through the Antarctic winter.
Iceberg: A huge block of floating ice that has broken off a glacier or ice shelf.
Swim: Penguins swim by flapping their wings like flippers, reaching speeds of over 10 km/h.

How to Solve the Penguin Word Search

"Flightless" is the longest word and runs straight down, with a double S. "Antarctic" and "swim" both run diagonally down to the right. "Huddle" and "iceberg" are the only words that read normally across; "huddle" has a double D.

Penguin Activities for Winter Science

Huddle like penguins: students stand close together and take turns moving into the middle.
Find Antarctica on a globe and talk about why it is so cold.
Ask why penguins are birds even though they cannot fly.