This summer, my kids and I had fun hunting for Buckys! Bucky Badger is the mascot of the University of Wisconsin. Bucky on Parade was a community and public art event. 85 painted Bucky sculptures were placed all over the city and surrounding areas. Kids (and adults) followed the maps to find the Buckys. Prizes were awarded as kids checked them off their list. The Buckys were auctioned off to raise money for charity.
Here are some pictures of our favorite Buckys. At the bottom of this post are pictures of the giant Bucky puzzles we made at my school with different classes.
One of the things I loved about this event was that it got kids interactive with maps. My 4 year old son is really into maps lately and many times we got in the car this summer my kids would pull out the Bucky map to read the street names and see what was near us. I definitely think it helped both of them with their map reading skills!
The Golden Bucky! This one moved around throughout the area.
These are my parents. Hi Mom! (My mom reads my blog and leaves me comments sometimes.)
The Celestial Bucky was my favorite!
My daughter managed to find all 85 and I think I saw about 83.
I had students bring in pictures of themselves with the Buckys and I posted them all over this bulletin board. Then I had three different grade levels create these giant Bucky “puzzles”.
I drew out the Bucky image on large banner paper. Then, I cut each one up into about 40 pieces. Kids each got a piece of the Bucky to decorate. They did not know what the final image was until they guessed it. Every class figured it out as we were working by asking questions.. “is it an animal?” etc. Then, we reassembled and taped all of the pieces together.
On this first Bucky, the kids could do whatever they wanted, but they had to include red somewhere on their piece. I thought that might tie it all together.
On the 2nd one, they had to use cool colors on their piece. That worked out mostly!
The last one was Warm Color Bucky. Again, you can see where they mostly got the idea of warm colors!
The Official Bucky on Parade Website
Bucky on Parade: Sneak Preview
Unveiling of Some of the Downtown Buckys
The other thing my students did was design their own themed Bucky on a template provided for them. These turned out soooo cool!! In my next blog post, I will post some of these pictures.
Hi Marcia! Such a cool idea!