Kids dig Tacy

By Sara Gilbert Frederick, Special to The Free Press
The Free Press

MANKATO May 07, 2008 10:41 pm

— The kids were a bit confused.
Although her name was Tacy and she had the curly hair they expected, those curls weren’t red. And she looked far too young to have been written about more than 100 years ago.
“They wanted to know if I was the real Tacy,” laughed Tacy Masters, who was named after one of Maud Hart Lovelace’s famous characters 17 years ago this weekend. “I’m not 100 years old.”
Tacy was introduced to a group of about 18 students from Franklin Elementary’s Walkabout program on Wednesday. The kids, all first- through fourth-grade students, were touring Tacy’s House on Center Street as part of a field trip planned by Wendi Masters, Tacy’s mother and the lead Walkabout teacher at Franklin.
“We’ve been reading the Betsy-Tacy books every day at school,” Wendi Masters said. “We’re finishing the third book right now. This field trip is a culmination of that.”
Walkabout is an after-school program that combines community service with work on math and reading skills. Four afternoons a week, the students participate in a scheduled activity; about once a month, they also work on a project, whether it’s cleaning up the school grounds or building robots out of recycled items.
“I try to make sure the activities are fun,” Masters said. “They’ve been in school all day, and it’s hard for them to settle down and stay focused. So I try to make the learning fun.”

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