Book Club 911 :: Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library

Last month's book club book was Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library. Due to illness, we had to postpone our meeting until today. This delightful story has been a favorite of Bigboy's since we first discovered it last year. It's still a favorite of everyone here and it was the hands-down favorite of all of the other kids in our book club. 

The Game is On!

When I decided to make it a book club book, I knew I wanted to host it in our local library doing a kind of scavenger hunt, but I had no idea that the publisher had already created one! Thanks for making it super easy on this busy mama! You have to send an email requesting access to the files, so give yourself plenty of time to do this, if you want to set up your own game. For our discussion, I used the discussion questions found at the end of this page. Then we moved on to the game.

We divided the group up into two teams of four kids each. Team Lemon and Team Cello used clue cards to guide them to specific books or sections using the Dewey decimal system. At each location, they discovered a Pictogram card which they used to solve a final puzzle and printed it on their answer sheets. When they solved the final puzzle, they were awarded their goodie bags as a prize. 

Team Lemon finished first and got their picture taken with a quote from Groucho Marx that shows up in the book and in our library! Team Cello finished up a few minutes later and met us over by the treat bags and cupcakes. 

There might be balloons! (and cupcakes)

Googley-eyed Lemoncello Cupcakes

I sent the cupcakes home with the kids since our library had no good space to chow down in. 

Gift Bags

What's a party without a little bag of fabulous prizes to take home? 

These were the most fun to put together. 

A pine scented air freshener as a reminder of the smell-o-vision games from the book. I wanted to find some actually shaped like pine trees, but those were all Margarita and Vanilla scented. Go figure.

Each child received a quarter and a nickel along with a plea not to break any windows. It's an inside-the-book-joke. I also made homemade bookmarks with this Dr. Seuss quote also in the book. 

There were goofy glasses that looked like something you'd find on Luigi Lemoncello's nightstand… or face. And I also included a cipher disk for making secret codes. 

What's a party without party blowers? And lemon drop candies just for fun. 

I also printed out some rebus, anagram and pictogram puzzles for more puzzle solving fun. 

I'm pretty sure this one was the best one yet!

Book Club 911: Nim's Island by Wendy Orr

Last week, we held our first book club of the year for BigBoy and some fellow homeschooled book lovers. Nim's Island by Wendy Orr is a short little adventure story about a homeschooled girl named Nim who lives on an island with her dad, the scientist. They turned this book into a fun little movie not too long ago. Most of the kids hadn't seen the movie so that made the book club extra exciting… I showed them the opening scene and I'm pretty sure they were going to go home and beg their parents to watch the whole thing. (BTW… my kids only made it through the first ten minutes of the sequel, Return to Nim's Island,  before they were begging me to turn it off it was sooooooo bad. Just FYI.) And all of the kids in the book club said they enjoyed this book so much they wished it had been longer! Quite a compliment to the author, if you ask me!

A couple of kids tasted it. They said it was bland.

So, for book club, I demonstrated what is inside of a coconut and we discussed things like marine biology, whether a person can really be swallowed whole by a whale, what sort of things Nim and her dad study on their island, what the island itself might have looked liked, what really happened to Nim's mother and bioluminescent plankton (Nim's favorite kind). (You can find lots of discussion guides out there for this book just by looking up "Nim's Island Teacher Resources".) For the last part of the discussion, I showed them this really neat clip of bioluminescent plankton and they were spell bound! We also discussed the differences between how a book tells a story and how a movie tells a story while I used some scenes from the movie to help illustrate my points.

For our craft, we made some simple weather station devices that I hope the kids are using at home now. The first was a weather vane to help show the direction of the wind and the second item was a homemade barometer. They were kind of tricky for some of the kids… stretching the balloon super tight takes a little more muscle than some of them had, but I think they went over well. (Thank goodness for my big kid helpers!)

For a snack, we had some of Fred's Bananas and Jack's Favorite Strawberries. I also made some Bioluminescent Plankton Punch. This was a huge hit. I wouldn't tell the kids how we did it, but being super smart, they figured it out themselves. You take a glow bracelet, crack it and place it in the bottom of a solid color plastic cup (we used blue Solo cups). My big kids wiped each of the bracelets with a paper towel before inserting them just to make sure none of them were leaking. Then we placed a clear plastic cup inside of the solid cup and added some ice and 7-up and voilà…

Plankton Punch!

Yeah… they thought it was cool.

Next up… By The Great Horn Spoon by Sid Fleishman

Book Club 911 :: A Nest for Celeste

{This post includes Amazon affiliate links, but you probably already knew that…}

Our final book club meeting of the year was A Nest for Celeste: A Story About Art, Inspiration and the Meaning of Home by Henry Cole. The kids said that they enjoyed these story. It had a lot of drama in it which appealed to them and enough historical fiction to get them interested in John James Audobon and whether or not he had a real assistant names Joseph (he did). They even noticed the Audobon bird clock hanging on the wall and said, "HEY!!! That says Audobon!!"

Our discussion followed the discussion in the Teaching Guide offered by the publisher pretty closely with a few additions.

1. Perspective… (pg. 58) When Celeste is climbing the banister she gets a different perspective on this house she lives in (and again when flying with Lafayette). Imagine what this room or you own house might look like from a different perspective. Can you describe it?
2. On pg. 174, the animals start warning Celeste about the approaching storm. Talk about how animals can sense things humans can't and ask if anyone has seen any animals behave differently when the weather is ominous.
3. Discuss the historical information in the afterword and show them the Audobon journal from the library. These are invaluable tools for a writer of historical fiction and for historians. It's called a primary source. Do you keep a journal of any kind?

After the discussion, we headed to the table for an activity. As a little nod to Celeste's basket weaving and to May being the month of Mary, we made woven heart baskets and filled them with some tissue paper, candy flowers and a beautiful holy card.  Unfortunately, the basket weaving turned out to be very frustrating and a little too hard for some of the kids. We got everyone through it, but it took longer than I thought. I did not label each flap like in the tutorial but I'm thinking now that that might have helped.

After that, we enjoyed a little snack of bread crumbs and cheese cubes… exactly what Celeste would have enjoyed most!

While they munched, I walked them through a little Audobon-ish art lesson using this tutorial. I had already cut some mixed media paper into small card sizes and painted a little watercolor background. This was a perfect little craft to do while they had a snack. I had planned for an outside game too but because the baskets took so long, we ran out of time. Then again, I don't know that we had enough kids to play the game that well. (It's called Cat and Mouse if you are interested and I was going to have the kids stand rather than sit in chairs.)

All in all, it was a great year. I'm thinking about books for next year and changes too. Maybe every other month would be a little more relaxed pace?

The Prairie Thief Book Club

Last month, our book club read The Prairie Thief by Melissa Wiley. It was enjoyed by just about everyone in our 9-11 age group and provided plentiful opportunity for discussion. Most of our books this year have been historical fiction. Working on this genre for a while, The Prairie Thief gave us an opportunity to discuss the research aspect of a piece of historical fiction. How important research is, how an author might go about doing that research, etc…. If you have a book club or just want to see my talking points to use with your own kids, I'm including them in pdf form below:

The Prairie Thief Notes

So, we began with a pail full of hazelnuts (not really full… hazelnuts are expensive!!!), a ladle (just in case anyone got out of line… wink wink!) and a colorful little brownie (I did not draw him…just found him here and colored him in).

We started first with our discussion. I might have pulled a string or two and surprised the kids with a video greeting from the authoress herself! I heard from one mom that her son said that video made this the BEST book club meeting of the whole year! (All I can say is that is pays off to rescue teens from scary overnight layovers at the airport and feed them pizza and ice cream. Wait… what?)

For our craft, we made homemade prairie butter. We poured 1/2 C. of whipping cream into pint size mason jars with plastic lids on top. Then we shook things up a little. Or rather… A LOT! Thank goodness I had my big kids on hand to help relieve some of the little arms that got tired of shaking. I think my suggestion for anyone else doing this would be to let the kids shake the cream alternating in pairs or start with room temperature cream. Apparently, room temperature cream doesn't take as long to form into butter. (Wish I'd known that before…)

Whole lotta shakin' goin' on!!!

One little boy told me he had ALWAYS wanted to make butter. I'm so glad we could help him accomplish that lifelong goal! :) Once it forms, you have to rinse your butter off in cold water. We used little plastic party cups for each child. They wrote their initials on them so they would know which was theirs. Each child's butter was scooped into the plastic cups, rinsed and then popped into the fridge to firm up while we headed outside for a game of Prairie Predators and Prey.

I found a version of this game online and modified it to fit our group. The idea is that each predator has to capture two prey in order to survive the winter. Each prey has to collect three food bags (candy corn) in order to survive the winter and not get caught by a predator. So we selected two kids to act as the predators while the others were prey who moved from the safety of their natural habitat (the garage) across the driveway towards the food bags. 

There were five temporary shelters (chalk circles) that could be used to escape the predators. Even one foot inside and they couldn't be captured. The predators had to keep moving, swooping in and out of the sideline area trying to snag (or tag) some prey.

Other than one skinned knee (poor BigBoy), this game was a HUGE HIT! We played in 5 minutes rounds and gave everyone a chance to be both a predator and prey. Some kids discovered that if prey get too greedy trying to capture as many food bags as they can, they run more risk of being captured. Life lesson. ;)

In fact, it was such a huge hit, we didn't have time for a snack. So we packed a Brownie Hat up for each kiddo and sent them home with their butter, some food bags (candy corn) and a Prairie Remnant Scavenger Hunt I created. I've mentioned a park that has a protected remnant of a prairie on it before here on the blog. It tied in nicely with this book but I don't know if that's feasible for anyone else. Check your local parks department, maybe?

Our Brownie Hats

Thank you to Melissa for her wonderful video greeting! (I owe you some baked goods.)

The next book is A Nest for Celeste...

 

Some feedback, please...

Doing a lot of thinking these days about the changes in the blog world and where and how I still fit in. I won't bore you with the details right now because they are still kind of rambling around in my head. I know I am not alone. And it's not some sort of pity party I want to have because I don't expect things to stay the same forever (no matter how much I might want them too). I know that people grow and change, so, it's kind of trying to find this old blog's place in all that newness.

Anyway, one of the things that I have noticed is that when I first started blogging, everyone was sharing ideas and thoughts. Sharing their own, or sharing what they had seen someone else do that inspired them in some small way. There were carnivals of loveliness with introductions to what someone had written instead of just cold, unfeeling linky-do thingamaboppers. (I'm kidding, sort of… those carnivals took a lot of time, I know! And a linkz thingy is so much easier and practical, but it seems like EVERYONE has a link-up going on these days, I can't even keep track of them all.) There were new ideas to celebrate ancient feast days and also the sharing of old traditions that had been in families for generations that were seeing the light of day in other parts of the country/world thanks to the internet.

Now, the blog world has become so chockfull of ideas that it feels overwhelming to a lot of people. I really don't want to add to that overwhelming feeling and I think maybe I have unknowingly because I was still blogging based on the premise that sharing our ideas and our talents so that they might inspire someone else was what it was all about.  I've always thought of this blog as a means of recording and archiving our days so that my children can look back on them someday and remember. But the fact of the matter is that it takes time to post things and if I knew that most people who still come to this place to read are just keeping up with someone they consider a family friend and not looking for ideas or to be inspired, then I would blog very differently. I was really intrigued when Sarah put up a survey and have thought of doing the same thing… but that takes time and now is not the season of extra time. So, let me just ask a quick question…

BigBoy's Kitchen Madonna in my kitchen. Didn't he do a great job?

The Book Club 9-1-1 posts… are you all interested in knowing in detail what we do or is it just something interesting to read about and then move on from? For example… our most recent meeting was to study and discuss The Kitchen Madonna by Rumor Godden {affiliate link}. It's one I've done before with my big kids. Last time I did it, there was a sizable outcrying of people who wanted specific information on the talk and the craft. This year's craft was a little different from the last one but writing up tutorials and publishing documents to Scribd takes time and I just don't feel like doing it if there isn't a sizable interest (meaning more than just a passing interest). So, I'd love to hear from you and please, don't be afraid to be honest with me. If you are not in a place to be actively interested in posts like this and while they interest you as a possible future idea, you really don't think you'd ever really sit down and attempt it, please let me know. If you like seeing the pretty pictures but really don't care about details, please let me know that. If you want details like where to buy and how much it costs and want templates to print off right now, let me know that too. I know everyone is super busy, so I really appreciate your feedback!

Book Club 9-1-1: Ballet Shoes

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild 

{affiliate link}

Part of the decorations were these three "necklaces" I made to show the kids what the girls' necklaces might have looked like. The middle one is actually a baby rosary that Sunshine had that looked like little seed pearls. The others were just beads that I purchased at Hobby Lobby strung on some thread. I also used my husband's carved elephant that his grandparents gave him when he was three. I thought it was clever and a couple of the kids actually remembered the quote!

So, this book wasn't a huge hit with the kids in the group. And it wasn't just the pink cover. Most of them found it boring, even the girls. That's OK though. They read it and hopefully it'll mean more to them in the future.

We started off with a quiz game instead of a regular discussion. I divided the kids into 2 teams and each person had to answer a question right in order to win a mini-pack of gum (get it… G.U.M…. Great Uncle Matthew). If they didn't know the answer, they could ask their team for help. Just about all of them answered their questions correctly. And they really liked the extra pictures I printed out of things like a 1930's phonograph in a red box just like Miss Dane's, a Citroen automobile just like Mr. Simpson's, Pevensey Castle which doesn't look much like a castle, a Tenniel Alice and a gold half sovereign like Petrova got on her 12th birthday. It gave them a chance to picture what some of the things in the book looked like.

The activity part, they really liked and I'm wishing I had planned a longer time for this. Since the three girls first learn how to pantomime at the dance academy, I decided to play some pantomime games with the book club kids. They all did really well and enjoyed it tremendously.

Some of our personal fossils on display

After that, we looked at the two fossils we own that were gifts from a dear friend. Then we pretended we were digging for fossils and dug out all the chocolate chips in a chocolate chip cookie using toothpicks and paint brushes. I told them to chip away the cookie like it was rock and brush it away from the fossils (chocolate chips).

Snack time was rather perplexing, since the family in this story is very poor and food isn't discussed much, but they did have some interesting "beavers" with the good Doctors who were teaching them at home. One of the things mentioned was Vienna Cakes and ginger drink. I took Vienna Cake to mean Sachertortes since they are the most famous viennese cakes. I made a simplified version in cupcake form with candy ballet shoes on top.

pink for the girls, white for the boys

And the "ginger drink" in the book was probably ginger tea, but knowing that can be too spicy even for a seasoned tea drinker like myself, I opted for ginger ale.

Here are links to my printable pages for anyone who might be interested:
Talking Points (I used these Q & A's for the quiz/discussion at the beginning of the meeting)
Snack/Activity Ideas (These are just ideas. We didn't use all of them.)


Next up: Kitchen Madonna by Rumer Godden.

WWRW: An interesting combination...

Hey there! My mom is visiting in town right now so I'm going to make these brief, well…brief for me, that is. First up in this British themed WWRW is…

 Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
{affiliate link}

This is our Book Club 9-1-1 book for November. Did I mention that our book club is made up of 7 boys and only 3 little girls? I've been hearing from some moms that the pink factor of that cover was almost too much for some of the boys but they persevered like the brave young men I know they are! It wasn't originally published with that cover of course. Although, I don't know that these are really any better…

Never judge a book by it's cover, okay boys? If you don't know the story of Ballet Shoes, it's a wonderful piece of historical fiction set in England in the late 1920's and is considered one of the best glimpses inside what life was like for child performers on the stage at that time. It tells the story of three little girls who are adopted by a rather eccentric gentleman and given to his great niece and her nurse, Nana, to raise because he thought "all women liked babies". He then disappears for a lengthy adventure and the women have to provide for and educate the girls and take care of the house and themselves not knowing when or if he will ever return. It's wonderfully rich with historical references that could be used for any number of rabbit hole adventures, which is what I was counting on when I brainstormed book club ideas. I'll post how it goes later.

Next up…

Death Cloud by Andrew Lane
{affiliate link}

Lissa posted a link to a review of this series on FB and as soon as I read about it, I knew The Professor, lover of all things Sherlock related, would want to read it. It's a series that explores Sherlock Holmes' teen years. In this first book, he is 14 and is forced to spend the summer living with an aunt and uncle he's never met thinking that he's in for a summer of boredom when surprisingly, he makes a friend (no, it's not a pimply face Watson), acquires a tutor and stumbles across a dead body in the woods. Well, this summer just got interesting! Psssssst... he meets a girl too. The Professor has read just about all of the Sherlock mysteries and he's even enjoyed watching some of the rebooted Sherlock series with me. (No, he's not seen THAT episode.) He's a stickler for not violating canon unless it's for a really good   reason so we'll see what he thinks of this series and the addition of Sherlock's older sister.

I previewed Death Cloud {affiliate link} and was fairly impressed. I found one aspect of the ending a bit hard to believe, it just seemed too improbable, but I think it's definitely an easy read and a fun story, if you are willing to suspend your disbelief just a tad. I will leave him to critique whether or not Mr. Lane captured Conan Doyle's Sherlock as a young man or not but it is the first young adult series to be endorsed by the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate, so they must have liked it. So far, he says it's seems accurate and he's already recognized a name that was mentioned as one of Sherlock's early cases. Seems like Mr. Lane did his homework! I'm not sure the cover art designer did though. I had no idea Justin Bieber hair was popular in the 1860's. 

This series is targeting young adults, so there is a bit of a romance blossoming in this first book but nothing that would be inappropriate for a younger reader. I'd recommend 12 and up only because of the scenes of peril and, you know, the dead body stuff.

Book Club 9-1-1: Sir Lancelot the Great

"Book Club 9-1-1, what is your book emergency?"

My three oldest kiddos participate in a teen/tween book club once a month that is hosted at a friend's house. I could tell that BigBoy was kind of in need of a little something similar to do that was geared more towards his age group. Remembering the fun book clubs we used to have here for the older ones when they were about his age, I decided to jump back into book club hosting mode and put out the call to our local homeschooling group to find some like minded friendly readers. 

We got a good response and had our first meeting last week discussing The Adventures of Sir Lancelot the Great by Gerald Morris {affiliate link}. This was BigBoy's pick. He loves this whole series {affiliate link}. I asked him to recommend something short and fun for the first meeting since we didn't quite have a full month to read the book. We are calling the group "Book Club 9-1-1" because it's for 9-11 year olds specifically. We have a few 8 year olds who are strong readers and who will be turning 9 this year and I'm sure if we had a 12 year old who was really interested in joining I wouldn't say no, but for the most part, the 9-11 crowd is a good age range to work with. I'm following a basic format of discussion, craft/activity & themed snack.

 ~ Discussion ~

My primary focus is on discussing the book. I even told the parents that if their child doesn't read the book, they shouldn't come to book club. (I hope that's not mean.) This is not just a play date or a social club, it's supposed to be about the books first and foremost and getting kids exciting about reading and exploring them. I came up with talking points and led the discussion. (I have uploaded all of my documents to Scribd so you can use them if you wish for your own personal use.) The talking points are a rough outline of things we discussed starting with discussing the book but then focusing mainly on the Papal coat of arms in order to lead into the activity. I printed out a copy of the three most recent ones and explained what each symbols meant and why it was chosen by the Pope who chose it. (Those can be found on the Symbols document. Sorry it's not better organized. I didn't think of sharing the documents until after the fact.)

~ Craft ~

Warning: terrible picture thanks for the impending downpours that day

For an activity, each child made their own coat of arms. They each had a shield that they glued onto black card stock. There are tons of free templates out there. I used one similar to this one. I printed out lots of different symbols and decorations for them to glue on to their shield also mottos to choose from. I also cut strips of construction paper in different colors for anyone to add. Colors are very important in heraldry as each color has its own meaning. (Some of them I kind of fudged a little to fit the colors I had.) I glued a strip of the construction paper next to the word I thought it represented on this sheet.  They also chose a motto from some that I found here and printed up. Once everyone was finished, I had their last names already printed out for them to glue at the top and they shared with the group why they chose the symbols they did. BigBoy said he chose a shell because it reminded him of Cupcake's Baptism. (Melt my heart! Don't worry, he also chose a Badger because he's a Hufflepuff, so he's a real kid too.)

~ Snacks ~

Croissants ~ from France, like Lancelot!

For snacks, I chose three themed based snacks (although two would have been fine). Everyone knew that Lancelot was from France so I prepared some simple cheese croissants (stick a piece of cheese in a croissant, yeah... that simple) to represent France. 

Pears ~ No poisoned ones!

Since one of the stories involved Guinevere accidentally giving a poisoned pear meant for herself to another knight and being charged with murder, my girls sliced some pears (non-poisoned ones). 

Acorns ~ Please don't drop them!

There is also a story in the book about Sir Lancelot plunking acorns down from a tree onto the head of another knight so we thought these little candy acorns would be kind of fun. (I used butterscotch chips for the top and extra melted butterscotch chips to glue them together.) 

~ Extra Activity ~

I had planned about 2 hours of time for book club and I think that was a bit ambitious on my part. I've told the parents that next month will only be an hour and a half. We had some extra time at the end and since the rain hadn't started yet, we played a little bit of Blind Man's Bluff which is a medieval game!

I hope to be better organized about sharing our book club plans in the future. Maybe it will inspire someone else to start up a club for their kids. It doesn't have to be elaborate. I did all of the prep work of for the craft a couple of weeks before. And having my big kids on hand made it even easier!

Links to all of the documents:
Talking Points
Heraldry Symbols (with Papal Coat of Arms)
Meaning of Colors
Heraldry Mottos (the formatting looks a little wonky, don't know why... hmmmm)
Snack Labels