Wacky, Tacky the Penguin Fun!

We've been have a wacky, very tacky, time of it with Tacky the Penguin this past week! You may remember our fun from last year...Well, we're back at it again not just because it's such an awesomely funny story, but because each year, grades 2+ in our district have several genre units we are required to teach. Our second grade units are about teaching tolerance through fantasy stories and then a nonfiction unit follows on that same topic too. In the fall, we use Stellaluna and then do a nonfiction unit on bats. It works out beautifully and the students love the variety of activities during our units that we throw in as "extras"!  The story is OFF LIMITS as a read-aloud in any other grade as a district policy so unless the students have the book at home, it is exciting and new to them which is great! What is NOT in the genre unit on Tacky is everything I have to share with you here! 

One important thing we do is to work on vocabulary for the story. This year, I posted vocabulary cards as an around the room activity and then hung them on the whiteboard on display for the week. 

We also made these cute Tacky friends and hung them up. Each shirt and bow tie pattern was copied on scrapbook paper. 

Each child in the grade has a copy of the book, so we can do repeated readings and work on fluency. We had great fun with character voices for the songs and chants! 

We did a lot of comprehension work in a packet that I created for the children. Here we sequenced the events and wrote about character traits.

The class completed a variety of graphic organizers similar to Venn Diagrams and Thinking (tree) Maps because that is a school improvement goal. The other pages have story questions similar to those asked on the DRA test.

Then there were plenty of things we did just for fun! We invented a new companion for Tacky and also wrote about some other tricks that Tacky might be good at! The students loved sharing their tricks with the others at their table group.

When it was time for a brain break, we picked from these cards. The class favorites were the penguin march through the hall and singing some really DREADFUL songs together with a strong country twang. The class thought this was just the best!

On Friday, we had a Wacky Tacky Day. The students dressed in their worst mismatched attire and accessories!

I wasn't quite as tacky as the kiddos who really got into it... but I wore some totally crazy floral leggings and borrowed a tuxedo shirt and bow tie from my son's closet. I pretended to be Perfect who is starting to appreciate the benefit of letting loose every now and then! 

The kiddos were also allowed to bring their companions to school!

A few hunters joined us too.

In the afternoon, the students watched the documentary/movie,  March of the Penguins, which they absolutely loved! It is a great intro to the nonfiction unit on penguins as the second half of the genre unit begins.

Our Tacky week and wacky day were such a blast! If you are interested in the penguin crafts, worksheets or activities, you can find them in my Tacky the Penguin Unit .

It would be so tacky for me to show how much fun we've been having without inviting you all! 

You can have a Wacky Tacky Day in your room too!

 Just send home this little note!

 Click on the picture to download a copy!

:)