Activities inspired by The Duck Who Played The Kazoo
Celebrate National Kazoo Day on January 28. For more info, visit www.nationalkazooday.com.
Activity #1: Generate a list of words that rhyme with “kazoo.”
Activity #2: Copy the text for one page of the book and ask students what they notice. What words rhyme? Can they count the beats in a line?
Activity #3: Ask students to listen carefully and to tingle their fingers or flap their arms like wings every time you read “zu zu” in the story.
Activity #4: The duck goes through different emotions in the story: happy, lonely, sad, tired and finally, happy again. As you read, ask students to put their thumbs up if the duck is happy and thumbs down when he is not. Ask students to write a story or draw a picture of a time when they were happy, sad, or lonely.
Activity #5: Discuss ways of making new friends. How did the duck make new friends? Generate a list of ideas on how to make a new friend. Ask students to write a story about a time they made a new friend.
Activity #6: As you read the story, have students clap the beats for the refrains. Talk about beats and syllabic patterns.
Activity #7: At a center, students can retell the story using ducks made out of play dough. Ducks could be modeled or made with a duck-shaped cookie cutter.
Activity #8: Have students count how many ducks are in the story. Make a math story using the 1 duck + 6 new friends = 7 ducks. Have students represent this with words, picture or numbers.
Activity #9: Make a class book of ditties. Children can illustrate their own page or take turns performing their ditty for the class or a larger audience.
- Take turns having each student create their own ditty using the same beat pattern and/or rhyme scheme as
zu zu.”
- Example: “There once was a Phoebe
She played:
Da nitty, da nitty
Moo moo.”
Contributed by Laney Nielson
