August 9, 2010

"I'm the thief!" (aka Kids' Book Club part 2)



Joshua chose a Cam Jansen book for his turn at our summer kids' book club. Specifically, he chose "Cam Jansen: the mystery of the stolen corn popper" in which the kids' are shopping for back to school supplies and someone keeps stealing shopping bags. For his meeting, we did some fun mystery type games. We started by splitting into two groups and doing a mystery vocabulary contest. I put words such as "alibi" and "victim" up on the board, read a definition aloud, and teams took turns coming up with which word fit the definition. If they missed it, the other team had a chance to get it.

Next we played a memory game. We practiced using our photographic memories like Cam. I put out a tray with several items, they studied it, said "click" and then closed their eyes while I removed a few objects. Then they would open their eyes and write down (or draw a picture) of what they thought was missing. We did this several times and I added more objects each time to make it harder.



While we were finishing that game, Joshua went upstairs and dressed in a funny costume.
I had set out a green binky's shopping bag (like in the book) on the counter. He ran into the kitchen, yelled "I'm the thief!", grabbed the bag, and ran back upstairs and hid it in Maren's room. I then told the kids they were all witnesses to a crime and asked if they could remember what the thief was wearing, what he said, what he did, etc. . .



Under the green shopping bag I had put a clue, which asked a question about the book. When they answered the question, I opened the clue and it told us a "department" of the store to search next, like the shoe department, school supplies department, baby department, etc . . . The clues led us to my daughter's room where the shopping bag was hidden.

In the bag were treat bags filled with "Binky's surprise bags" (from the book) filled with green candies. I also served green food, like grapes, celery, kiwi, and honeydew. It was a fun book club.

4 comments:

  1. It WAS a fun book club! Your creativity never ceases to amaze me.

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  2. Just stumbled on your blog and ADORE this kids book club idea...how do you organize/run these?

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  3. My friends Annie and Christina organized the whole summer kids book club. There were about 7 kids invited to participate, and at the first meeting there were a bunch of age appropriate books laid out for the kids to browse through and choose from. After each child picked a book, they were assigned a week to host, where we would meet at their house and they (aka mom) would be in charge of questions and activities to go along with the book. We met at the same time every week. Afterward, there was usually a snack and the kids would go out and play while the moms talked. Younger siblings and older siblings were also usually in attendance, and would either try and participate or just play in another room. The other moms would help with the activities as necessary. My kids really enjoyed it and hopefully we will do it again next year.

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  4. You are so creative. Sounds like a great book club activity, I bet Joshua loved stealing the bag. Gma Pam

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