Sew Bookish Blog

June Book and Cookie Club: Castle in the Attic

6/27/2018

Every month I facilitate a book club for students in 3rd - 5th grade. This program is designed to be a caregiver and child book discussion group. I plan activities and games based on the book that we read. B&C Club is one of my favorite programs and I love the challenge of creating new activities and games each month for The Crew (my nickname for my B&C Club participants) to enjoy.

My plan for this month's B&C Club can be accessed by clicking here.

Our book for this month was The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop.

What's Your Medieval Name? -- Nametag Activity

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I decided that it would be great fun for The Crew to create their own Medieval Name for the evening.

I made this Medieval Name generator graphic using PicMonkey and found some name inspiration on Storm the Castle. As I was creating this graphic, I realized that I only had so much space to work with so I opted for gender neutral names. I also picked out some Jousting horse names for some of the surnames because I found it amusing.

British Word Matching Game -- Icebreaker Activity

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I purchased the clipart for this collage from the amazing Krista Wallden of Creative Clips.

I thought it would be fun to have The Crew match British terms and slang to pictures that I mounted on foam core. This was such a fun icebreaker because it got everyone to work together!

Race to Build a Castle -- Discussion Game

The Crew was divided into two teams for this game. Each team took turns answering questions from the book. If they answered the question correctly, they were given the card the question was written on and used the card as a "block" to build their castle. To win the game, a team had to earn 20 blocks and have a castle that had 2 towers. It was a close race, but Unicorn Castle was victorious!

Stained Glass Art

This was one of the most popular activities of the evening. For this activity, The Crew drew a design on glossy photo paper with Sharpie markers. When they were finished drawing and coloring their design, they outlined the shapes of their design with a black marker. I actually had this photo paper lying around my house, so I didn't have to buy any #score! The idea for this activity came from Happy Hooligans blog.

Castle Challenges

This is a really cool STEM and team building activity that I found on Teachers Pay Teachers. I plan on trotting this activity out again during the school year for our Makerspace. The supplies are super simple and cheap - a ruler and index cards. I added cups for an additional challenge.

Magic Tricks

I pulled some magic books from our nonfiction section and marked the easiest tricks (and the ones I had the supplies for) with a post-it note. Some of the members of The Crew were excited to try out the tricks they learned on their friends and siblings.

Book Display

We are trying to promote our awesome nonfiction books via display carts for special programs. Our nonfiction section is tucked away in the very back corner of our department, so the books back there can get a bit neglected. I thought it would be fun to pull some books that related to various themes and topics in Castle in the Attic. I pulled books on castles, knights, jokes, and riddles.

Biscuits

Reading this book made me nostalgic for the time that I studied abroad in England (back in 2009). I had the opportunity to student teach in an English primary school. The best part of the day was tea time. All of the kids would go out to recess where they were supervised by parent volunteers. All of the teachers would head into the lounge for tea, biscuits, and cakes. I'm food oriented, so it's safe to say that this was my favorite part of the day.

I decided to order my favorite biscuit for The Crew to try. Unfortunately, Amazon was out of stock on the chocolate covered Digestives so I had to get the plain ones. I'm not complaining though, I get to enjoy some biscuits with my tea.

Summer Swag Bags

I might have kept one (or three) of the Squishies. Isn't it CUTE?

Last summer I thought it would be fun to give out little "swag" bags with activities and items related to the next book that we would be reading in Book & Cookie Club. I decided to bring them back again this summer because they were a lot of fun to put together!

This month's Swag Bag included Squishies (which were difficult to part with because they are tiny, cute, squishy animals), a "box of normal" (a Darice mini clear box with lock tabs purchased at my local Meijer for $1), Ticonderoga pencils (purchased at my local Meijer),Darice holographic star stickers, deco-trope craft with bamboo skewer, and I'm a Balloon! bookmark activity with string.

I have included the PDF to the activity templates and descriptions for the June Swag Bag.