Boy, do I love me some Tacky the Penguin! I always save Tacky for January because it makes me look forward to going back to school after winter break and my Firsties are ready to cannonball into character traits, compare/contrast and opinion writing.
We stared by reading the original
Tacky the Penguin written by Helen Lester and illustrated by Lynn Munsinger. We discuss Tacky and his companions, make predictions and sing
How Many Toes... in our tackiest voices. The kids LOVE it and they start to learn more about reading with expression.
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| {Tacky the Penguin is/can/has tree map} |
Next we go on to read the rest of the Tacky books and relate the character traits, mishaps and commonalities as we go.
Tackylocks and the Three Bears is another of the kids favorites. I will refer back to it when we study fairy tales.
Last week we had a blast with the Tacky craftivity. The kids cut and pasted their own Tacky, then designed a shirt for him. I told them to think about Tacky's style
as they designed the shirt. They had to have a reason for the design.
They wrote their reason on an iceberg and placed Tacky atop. The kids
got really creative with the designs, including making their own bow ties
from scrap paper!
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| {Tacky likes this shirt because it is crazy.} |
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| {Tacky likes this shirt because it is colorful and odd.} | | | |
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I love the reference to the text!
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| {Tacky likes this shirt because it is crazy.} |
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| {Tacky likes this shirt because it got lots of stuff on his shirt.} |
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| {Tacky likes this shirt because it has polka dots and stripes.} |
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| {Tacky loves his shirt because it has a monster on it!} |
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Tacky has no eyes and no feet, but he *loves* his monster shirt. I love it, too!
I pair the Tacky series with informational texts and videos about actual penguins, too. More to come on that.
