Book Club: From the Black Lagoon

This month I did something different: each of my book club meetings had a different book. Usually, all of the 5-8 year olds read the same book, but I had enough copies of two different books to run two different clubs: Valentine's Day from the Black Lagoon and Friday the 13th from the Black Lagoon. The activities for each were fairly similar, which made it easier for me to transition between the two groups:

1. Make your own party hat. Each book features a party, so there was a station where kids could craft their own party hats out of construction paper.

2. Write to our flat visitor. I have a Flat Stanley visiting me from Nebraska, so there was a spot for kids to write letters to the student who sent him.

3. Memory Game. I had two versions, one with hearts and heart-related pictures, and one with pictures of lucky and unlucky items. I switched them out depending on the book we were discussing.

4. Penny Cleaning and Penny Toss: This one was a bit of a stretch for the theme, but the kids enjoyed doing the "clean pennies with salt and vinegar" science experiment, then I had an area where they could try doing a penny toss with their clean pennies (which I let them keep).

5. Balloons and hula hoops. I reprised this activity from a previous book club meeting. The kids choose a balloon, inflate it, and try to get it through the hoop their parent is holding. The kids played really well together with this one, coming up with different challenges to do.

And that was it. Nice and simple activities after a short discussion of each book.