We’ve been have a wacky, VERY tacky, time of it with Tacky the Penguin activities 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 and the perfect read aloud. Tacky the Penguin is a story that teaches important lessons and it can be used to teach a variety of reading skills too.
Tacky the Penguin is our district-wide story selection for our genre units. Our second grade units are about teaching tolerance through fantasy stories. A nonfiction unit follows on that same topic too. So, in the fall, we use Stellaluna and then do a nonfiction unit on bats.
Tacky 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 curriculum is everything I have to share with you here! The students love the variety of activities during our units that we throw in as “extras”!
Tacky the Penguin Vocabulary
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.
Tacky Craft
We also made these cute Tacky friends and hung them up. Each shirt and bow tie pattern was copied on scrapbook paper.
A Fun Read Aloud!
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!
If you want to add your own set of Tacky the Penguin books to your classroom library, you can order a set from Amazon (Affiliate link).
Reading Comprehension Skills
We did a lot of comprehension work in a packet that I created for the children. Here we sequenced the events and wrote about Tacky’s 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.
Silly Tacky the Penguin Activities
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!
So 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 the character, Perfect, who is starting to appreciate letting loose every now and then!
Tacky wasn’t the only one joining in the fun. The kiddos were also allowed to bring their Companions to school!
A few Hunters joined us too.
Learning About Penguins
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 penguin fun begins.
Want to Join in on Tacky the Penguin Fun?
Our Tacky week and wacky day were such a blast! If you are interested in the penguin crafts, worksheets or Tacky the Penguin book companion 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!
Happy teaching 🙂
