Igloo fit for a penguin

We're ploughing the retro furrow a little further today. Pingu, anyone?

This igloo is all Pingu's fault. What can I say about Pingu, other than it was great when I was small and it still seems to fascinate both of my two today. The lack of 'dialogue' focuses things more on the tone of the interation and reactions of the characters to convey what's going on. BabyBoy finds it hysterical when I talk in "penguinese", although it could be the faces that I pull whilst doing so. (You try doing a Pingu impression with a straight face.) I'm not sure that me speaking penguinese at him is developmentally helpful but then I have another blogpost drafting on the report that hit the news this week recommending that under 2s should have no TV at all, lest it impact their development.

So we watch Pingu, and I worry that I may be making a 'rod for my own back' as regards making stuff. I'm not Harry Chuffing Potter. "Can you make me an igloo please, mummy?" Toddlergirl asks expectantly. Um. Hold on a minute...

Yes, yes I can!

Take:

1 pudding-pot (this one was a Cherry Chocolate Sponge Pudding. They're new from Cadbury, but not that highly rated here. Too dry and not saucy enough, matron.)
1 piece cardboard
1 piece A4 white paper
2 tissues (mansize for preference)
Some PVA glue

Cut a doorway out of the pudding-pot, filing down sharp edges with a nail-file if you worry about such things. (My poor nail-file has seen comparatively little of my nails of late).
Take a strip of cardboard, and snip a frill in one end so that you can fold the frill up inside the pot for glueing and sticky-taping down. Like so:

Cut rectangles out of the white paper, cover igloo in PVA glue and let toddler stick the 'ice' on.
Meanwhile, dilute PVA glue 1:1 with water and soak 2 mansize tissues.
Squeeze out excess, then shape soggy tissues into a penguin shape. Leave to dry (overnight or longer, depending on how soggy it is/was).
When penguin is dry use a felt-tip pen to colour it in.

It would be altogether easier to make a penguin out of Playdoh or plasticine but the chances of that getting eaten round here is high. The tissue sets hard, so is a little more durable.

If you have more than half a brain you might want to think about scale when making the penguin - unlike me. Fortunately Toddlergirl doesn't mind that the penguin doesn't fit through the door...