My Favorite Winter Book (Plus a fun craft)

A few years ago, I stumbled across the book How Big is a Million? by Anna Milbourne and Serena Riglietti and I completely fell in love with it. It’s the story of a penguin named Pipkin who wants to find out how big a million is. Along the way, he discovers 10 fish, 100 penguins in a huddle, and 1,000 snowflakes. Finally, his mom takes him outside at night to see a million stars. The best part is, the book comes with a HUGE poster that actually shows a million (tiny) stars!

Every year when I unfold that poster (so slooooowly), the excitement in the classroom builds and builds, and when it’s finally open, students are thrilled to see how many stars there are. It is so much fun! I leave it hanging in my classroom for a week or so and the conversations that come from it are the best. A few days ago, 2 boys had their noses right up to the poster trying to count the stars and wondering, “How did somebody draw that many stars?” It truly is baffling to consider that you really are looking at a million stars.

After we read the book and marveled at the poster, we made a craft to go along with it. First, we tore a piece of white construction paper and glued it to the bottom of a dark blue 12 x 18 piece of construction paper (my favorite is Tru-Ray because it’s super vibrant and doesn’t fade like some other brands). Then we went about adding our stars with tempera paint and Q-tips. Not quite a million of course…we decided that would be impossible for us in kindergarten, so we just made as many stars as we could. Finally, we made a penguin based off of this adorable craft over at Crafty Morning (get my free template below!).

Here are a few pictures to show how they turned out:

Aren’t they just the cutest?

When I prepped this craft, I printed the hearts on orange and white copy paper. Then I used a white Sharpie china marker to draw the body and wings on black construction paper for my students to cut. To save you some time, I threw together a template that you can download by clicking here: