Penguins Working Together 

Penguins Working Together 

written by Henslie Darke-Schreiber

“Penguins Working Together” was written in “The First Person” by 8 -year-old third-grade honor student-athlete Henslie Darke-Schreiber.  Henslie is a gifted third-grade student who is taking accelerated academic courses. We would like to point out that Henslie’s literary project is a work in progress.

She plays soccer, and basketball and is on the traveling team for each sport.  She is also an excellent competitive gymnast and swimmer and enjoys hiking,

Henslie enjoys building legos with her sister and aspires to be a writer.  Other information about Henslie was withheld by request

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 Once upon a time, there were four (4) penguin friends. Their names were Lucy, Chris, Lilly, and Jacob. They lived in Iceland and go to a penguin school. They love to eat snow and fish and play together. They do not like being bullied or left out. Today they are going to visit Lilly’s grandparents and play on their ice rink.   They hopped in their ice car and drove off. As soon as they knew it, they were at Lilly’s grandparents. Their grandparents greeted them at the door. They went inside their igloo and talked. Now they are taking all of the penguin’s ice skating on their rink! Yay!!!! As it got cold, they went inside and ate their favorite meal. Soon it started to grow dark and they all had to get back home. See you tomorrow at the first day of school.  

   Hi penguin friends. Today is the first day of Penguin School. I am so excited; I am also nervous. What if they don’t like me? At least I have Chris, Jacob, and Lucy. I went to go get dressed and I had a problem. My baby brother was chewing on the dress that I chose to wear. So, I had to choose a different outfit. I picked my overalls. My mom said I looked cute in them. Now it is time to go to school and my mom is dropping me off. When I started to walk up, I spotted Lucy. We went up to the school and knocked on the door. Hi, said our teacher. He looked nice. My name is Mr. Featherbottom. Welcome! Come In and join us. We went inside and everyone welcomed us. Today, we will be working on our Art badge. If you complete the project, you will receive the badge.

   Good morning penguin friends. Today we get to go to school again. I love my school. I ate my fish waffles and my mom dropped me off for school. I went inside the school. Mr. Featherbottom said that today is going to be different. Marcus raised his hand to ask why? He said because I could not pick one of the fabulous art projects, my old art teacher is going to come here and pick three beautiful paintings. So, what will change, ask Chris? She will be coming in at the end of the day and we will not have that much time for snacks. Awwww… but since she will be here, we will have a quick snack. Yay!!! said, everybody. After they talked, ding, ding, ding. Time for lunch. We all put our books down and got in line to go to the lunchroom.  My mom packed me fish chicken. Yummy! Time for recess. We went to play together. It was so much fun! 

    Time to line up again said Mr. Featherbottom. We went back to the classroom. Then, the door opened and Mr.Featherbottom’s old art teacher came in. She sat her stuff down on Mr. Featherbottom’s desk and went to the front of the room. She went to the front of the room and introduced herself. My name is Mrs. Flower. I heard that I am going to be judging some beautiful paintings.  How does this work? Jacob raised his hand and explained. You pick three paintings that you think are the best paintings in all the room. Those people can earn their art badges.  Well ok then. Let’s get started. She said it was a very hard decision since all the paintings were so wonderful. Finally, she picked the three paintings. I liked the one that has an “L”.  I also liked the red oreo painting. It is very created.  And the last one, I picked the sunset. It has a bunch of blended colors and has beautiful sunset and it is a wonderful picture. We grabbed our paintings off the desk and Mr. Featherbottom took our picture. Everyone clapped for us.  

   Ding, ding, ding… it was time to pack up and go home once again.  The art teacher left and we started to pack up. My mom came and picked me up. Finally, I was the last one here. My mom said sorry! What took you so long, I asked. I picked up a cake for Lucy’s birthday. Why are you picking up the cake, shouldn’t Lucy’s mom pick up the cake? Yes, but we are throwing a penguin surprise party for her. She will be so excited for all the fun gliding on our bellies. Then we drove home and I asked my mom, Lucy is coming over today and we have the cake. So, we will hide it. We got out of the car to start looking for a good spot to hide the penguin cake. We looked everywhere. We could not find a hiding spot for the cake anywhere and Lucy was coming soon.  

     Knock, Knock. Lucy is at the door. Oh no, what do we do? We threw the penguin cake in the fridge. Lucy’s mom dropped her off and we went straight upstairs to play with penguin dolls. When we were playing Lucy was sad. Did I ask her why? She said, my mom shows me my cake and she never showed me one and I am worried she forgot about my penguin birthday. We can pretend the penguin dolls are us and have a party. Your mom would never forget about your penguin birthday. Lucy’s mom rang the doorbell, and she was there to pick her up. I waved goodbye to her.  My family went and had some fish, and then I had to clean up the penguin doll mess. After that, the day was over. Mom said tomorrow is going to be a big day. Good night and don’t let fish on your toes bite.  I went to bed.  

    Good morning penguin friends. Today is also Lucy’s birthday. I am so excited to go to a penguin birthday party. I went to go get dressed in my penguin’s best dress. My mom called me down to eat french fish sticks. Then, we got in the car to go to Lucy’s birthday. My penguin brother threw a fit because he wanted to come to the penguin birthday party. My mom said that this is only for Lilly’s friends. We had a cake and a big present for her. Her party was at the Big Penguin Trampoline Park. I met Lucy there and she was so excited. I told her; her mom did not forget about her! She smiled.  We got to jump and dive around. It was so much fun! We ate the fish cake and it was so delicious.  I gave her a canvas so she could paint some more.  

     The next day, we got to have homemade fish pancakes. Good morning. We get to go to penguin school again. Today, we will be going to the snow park for the badge parade. What do we do in the badge parade, asked Gabby? You will show your penguin parents badges. This is a cupcake penguin competition. That sounds fun, said Jacob. After, that we went to play on the ice rink with all the other schools of penguins.  The teachers from all different schools will be the judges. We will pick who makes the best ones. So they put all of the penguins in groups. We picked our stands to bake on. We got our colored aprons on… 3..2..1… start. Our group of penguins had a plan. One boy penguin thought that we should only make what he wants. So now we have a big problem. The time is running out and we have not even started. Then the boy said, Let’s make separate cupcakes. I said, No, we have to work together. You learn by working together. Let’s see who makes the best cupcakes. The timer was almost out and we should GIVE the teachers the cupcakes. His was a great big mess and ours was perfect. You can always take talents from one another and use them. As we just finished talking, the timer went off. Perfect timing for a penguin! We took our cupcakes to the big table for the teachers to judge them. We were waiting for hours, and the penguin teachers finally made the big decision. Penguin School and Snow School, both won. We got two big trophies for both schools. This teaches all of our friends to work together and not to be mean. Penguins can always get along working together

FOOTNOTE: This article is the first of our new series called “YOUNG ACHIEVERS.”  If you know of talented youngsters (12 years or younger) that excel in the arts (music-painting-dance-acting), creative writing, academics, and athletes please submit your nominee to the City-CountyObserver@live.com. so we can publish their achievements.