April Book & Cookie Club: Matilda

Book and Cookie Club is a book discussion group that I have been facilitating for a little over two years.  I love this program because it gets particpants in third through fifth grade to have some fun with an adult caregiver.  ​

THE BOOK

This month we read and discussed Matilda by Roald Dahl.  The last time I read Matilda was when I was in elementary school. 

There is so much to talk about with this book.  Matilda's parents are two self-absorbed adults whose main interests are television and money.  Unlike most parents, they do not dote on their children, especially Matilda. Miss Trunchbull uses her physical strength and intimidating personality to bully adults and children into getting what she wants. 

There is a certain amount of appeal in the juvenile characters exacting justice on the unreliable adult figures.  

THE PLAN

Icebreaker

This month's icebreaker was emoji book pictionary.  I created the images using the PicCollage app on my iPad.  Participants had to figure out the name of the book title using the emojis.

matilda_book_emoji_pictionary.pdf
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Discussion Activities

Mrs. Wormwood's favorite thing to do during the day was to go out and play BINGO.  So, we played a version of BINGO.  I thought of characters, words, events, and places in the book and created a couple of different BINGO boards.  The words and BINGO cards can be found on pages 13-21 of the PDF.

matilda_april_2018.pdf
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Our next discussion game was Newt in a Pitcher.  I went hi-tech with this game.  I wrote 30 multiple choice questions and put them into a Google Slide Presentation.  I took two plastic pitchers and set up one on either side of the room.  I had participants break into two teams and I stood in the middle of the room with a handful of "newts."  Participants had to grab the newt from my hand in order to answer the question.  Fun was had by all.

Book Related Activities

DIY Chocolate Mug Cake Mix

I don't know about you, but I am impressed that Bruce Bogtrotter ate an entire chocolate cake by himself.  Talk about #Goals.  Participants made their very own DIY Chocolate Mug Cake Mix so that they can have chocolate cake whenever they feel like it (or when their caregivers say it is okay).

War with Jumbo Playing Cards

The word "war" comes to mind when I think about the adult and child relationships in Matilda.  The children teach the grown-ups  "lessons" by pulling well-planned pranks on them. 

So, naturally, the card game of War came to mind.  Thanks to Amazon, I was able to score two packs of jumbo playing cards.  They are a bit clumsy to shuffle but quite fun to play with.

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Build a Lego Car

matilda_stations.pdf
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Next Month's Book

I created a book trailer to introduce next month's book to The Club.