I recently attended a training given by one of my amazing colleagues about book discussions and she inspired me to add a new component to Book and Cookie Club - “Book Talk”.  I set aside 5 minutes for the Crew to share their thoughts on the book. I created some Google Slides that posed some questions: “How would you rate this book?”, “What did you like about this book?”, and “Would you recommend this book to a friend?”  

For the longest time, I was not sure how to approach discussing and evaluating the books that we read for Book and Cookie because I did not want it to feel like school.  I wanted to maintain the fun atmosphere that I established and was not sure how to tackle evaluating the books.
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After my colleague's inspiring workshop, I decided that there was a way for me to have The Crew evaluate the books and that there was a fun way to do it.  I thought of the three questions I wanted The Crew to answer then I browsed Giphy for inspiration.

I am happy to report that The Crew had a lot of fun sharing their thoughts on the book and our first “Book Talk” was a big hit.  The Crew had some really great thoughts and opinions on the book and we even extended our “Book Talk” by sharing what book characters we would love to meet in real life.  

Click here to see the slideshow I created for "Book Talk" (includes GIFs & questions)

Originally, I was going to make a Kahoot, but it was finals week at the high school and our WiFi needed a bit of a break.  I decided to create a Jeopardy-style game but with a twist.

I purchased one of those science fair cardboard tri-folds and covered it with Kraft paper. I printed the spell book clipart from Krista Wallden onto brown construction paper to create “flaps” that I could lift up to reveal questions about the book.
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I divided the room into two teams - “Billy Goats Gruff” vs. “Three Musketeers.”

Each team selected a captain and the captains picked the questions they would like to answer - i.e. L 20.

We played until we ran out of questions.

I provided books and various art materials for The Crew so that they could design new book covers that would be displayed in the library.

I made some examples of redesigned book covers and wrote up explanations of how I went about designing the new cover.  I used PicMonkey with the help of graphics from Pixabay to help me create my redesigned book cover examples.

We also discussed how the editors of a publishing company will select the cover art that goes on a book.  It is not common for an author to have input on what gets put on the cover of their book. This led to a good discussion of judging books by their covers and how that sometimes the best books have the worst covers.
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If I were to do this activity again, I would do a few things differently.  I would have The Crew go out and select a book they have already read, I would give them more time to work on their designs, and provide laptops for those that wish to design their covers digitally.

Click here to see my plans for this month’s Book and Cookie and the station signs for the different activities.

Our first book of 2019 will be “Phoebe and Her Unicorn: A Heavenly Nostrils Chronicle” by Dana Simpson.  I cannot wait! 

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

What's Your Medieval Name? -- Nametag Activity

British Word Matching Game -- Icebreaker Activity

Race to Build a Castle -- Discussion Game

Stained Glass Art

Castle Challenges

Magic Tricks

Book Display

Biscuits

Summer Swag Bags

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.

Our book for this month was Fake Mustache by Tom Angleberger.   

My Devious Plan

Escape Room Noob

Research

I highly recommend doing as much research as you can before you start the process of creating an escape room from scratch.  

Here are the websites & blogs that I referenced when I was creating the escape room:
The Logic Escapes Me
Now Escape
Lock Paper Scissors
​Weekend Notes
Instructables
​Fundraising Mums

Recommendations

These are the four major things that I wish I would have done a little bit better when I was planning and executing this escape room.  

• Time: give yourself time to plan your escape room
• Think: consider how you will set-up the room & where the clues will go
• Test: have a group of people test out your escape room so that you can work out the little kinks
• Try: make sure you know how to open the locks (I struggs to open and close that durn rope lock.  Yikes!)

Supplies

Some of the items for the escape room were things that I already owned.  I'm going to be 100% honest with you, I am in grad school, I work part time, and I'm married to a teacher.  We're not swimming in cash so I definitely designed the clues around things that I had lying around my house.  Anything marked with a "*" is something that I either own or was provided by my library. 

The whoopee cushion was my timekeeper  I let 'er rip to let everyone know that they had 15 and 10 minutes left.

Room Set-Up

Book and Cookie Club is hosted in our children's program room.  We have a lot of cabinets where we store our programming supplies.  I decided to utilize two of the cabinets for the escape room.  I also thought it was important to mark off the things that were NOT part of the escape room.  I used orange crepe streamers to block off the areas that weren't part of the escape room to provide a visual reminder in case participants fogot which areas were not part of the game.

​There was also the added challenge of everyone being in the room before we began the escape room.  I covered up the clues for the escape room with blue table cloths and made sure I had a fun icebreaker activity (mazes) for everyone to do at their seats as we waited for everyone to arrive.

The Story & The 1st Clue

Every escape room has to have a story!  I usediFakeText Message and Screen Cast O'Matic to create a text conversation between myself and Fako Mustacho (the evil villain).  The B&C Crew watched the video and began the search for their candy!

The hint is located in the the text messages of the video.

• Find a lock with numbers
• Combination is 4-2-2.

Clue #2: URGENT!

Clue #3: EVIL HAIR!

Clue #4 -- Catch That 'Stache

Clue #5-- Does it Fart?

Clue #6 -- The Tower

I taped a picture of a nose on four of the Lewo blocks.  I hid them inside of the tower.  The kids decided the best strategy was to knock down the tower to find the next clue!

Clue #7 -- It's SNOT funny

Clue #8 -- Picture Perfect

There's nothing funnier than putting mustaches on book characters.  I'm not going to lie, putting mustaches on The Berenstain Bears had me giggling uncontrollably.

The characters pictured here are: Harry Potter, Nancy Drew, Berenstain Bears, and Clifford (HNBC).

The Crew really thought long and hard on this one.  They came up with some ideas that I hadn't thought of (like counting the number of mustaches on the characters).  Ultimately, they figured out that the first letter of each character's name was the first part of the lock combination and then they realized that there were four pictures on the wall, which was the last part of the lock combination.

​So, the lock combination was HNBC4.

THEY DID IT!

The Crew solved the escape room in 22 minutes.  Each of the kids recieved a cello treat bag for their candy stash and sticky hand.  I considered getting mini whoopee cushions, but I decided the sticky hands and sugared up children would be enough of a punishment to the parents in attendance (Sorry! #notsorry #theyhadfun)

Mustache Photo Booth

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.

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.

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.

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.

Build a Lego Car

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

I learned a dangerous new skill this week: how to make a book trailer!  If you are not familiar with book trailers, think of them as movie trailers for books.  I am now already planning to make some trailers for Book and Cookie Club. I think this would be an amazing way to announce the next book!  

The process of creating my book trailers required some time, beginning with deciding which book to feature.  I was originally going to make one for I Text Dead People by Rose Cooper, which is the Book and Cookie Club book for October.  As I was putting together my trailer, though, I realized that I could not remember some of the plot points because I had read it over six months ago!  I decided to instead go with a book that was still fresh in my mind from the March meeting of Book and Cookie Club: What We Found in the Sofa and How it Saved the World by Henry Clark.

I wrote down what I thought were the most exciting and engaging parts of What We Found: a rare zucchini colored crayon, a mysterious sofa, three friends, flash mobs, a devious plot, and saving the world.  Those plot points helped me decide what images I needed to find for my book trailer.

It is important to note that you should always follow copyright laws when you use images and video to create your high-quality book trailer.   I found the bulk of my images on Pixabay, many of which are under the Creative Commons license and are free to download -- as long as you are human.  Computers and robots do not get to download anything. The Captcha will stop them! I had a bit of trouble finding the right image for a trio of friends similar in age to the three main characters of What We Found: Freak, Fiona, and River.  I ultimately purchased a few credits on iStockphoto because I found two pictures that were perfect for my video.  I wish iStock had a student plan because $33 for three images is a bit expensive.

The assignment for this week stipulated that we had to create two book trailers using two different web-based applications.  One application, Animoto, was assigned to us and the other application could be one of our choosing.

This is the first time that I have used Animoto.  I signed up under the trial membership to create an Animoto Memories video.  The video styles are organized by classroom, event, and holiday. Each video style has a unique layout and format which, unfortunately, are not customizable.  You are committed to using the font and background that comes with your chosen layout. I liked that Animoto has a stock music library of songs that are three minutes or shorter to help support the tone of your video.  The tracks range from lilting instrumental to creepy organ music. Videos made using the free trial of Animoto are limited to 30 seconds in length. One particular annoyance I encountered was that the preview playback on Animoto’s site was not working.  I had to produce (publish) my video to check my work in order to know what edits I needed to make. Overall, Animoto has some pretty slick features, but not enough for me to justify paying $96 per year to use it.

I used Adobe Spark for my flyer last week and was curious to see how the video application would fare.  I must admit that I was pretty impressed! There is a tutorial that pops up when you click on “video” that walks you through how to make a video.  The user does not have much freedom to customize the text or color scheme because they are predetermined in each of the eight available themes. For each “slide” in the video, the user can select from one of four layout options: fullscreen, split screen, caption, and title with text.  The stock music library is not as extensive as Animoto’s, but users are able to upload their own audio. Viewing the video was very simple: there is a video reel located on the bottom of the screen that allows the user to play each “slide” and preview the video in its entirety. For a free service, I felt that Adobe Spark offers some great options for the first-time video creator.  I will definitely continue using Adobe Spark to create book trailers.

I start every meeting with an icebreaker.  Participants were challenged to make words out of the phrase "Family Fletcher."  This was a very popular activity.  Some of my favorite words were : fairy, fart, and retch.  

For the bridge building challenge, I put out various items that participants could use to construct a bridge: straws, popsicle sticks, dominoes, jenga blocks, and masking tape.  The bridge had to be stable enough to hold some rubber bugs.  The challenge was to fit as many rubber bugs onto the bridge without causing the bridge to collapse.

The finger puppet soccer  station was a lot of fun to put together.  I used large green construction paper and created a small scale soccer field.  I printed off a couple of soccer player finger puppets from Kara's Party Ideas.  I am glad that I used cardstock for the finger puppets because regular printer paper would have ripped easily.  For the ball, I used a pom-pom.  Adults and kids had a lot of fun playing finger puppet soccer.  

Next month, we will be discussing El Deafo by Cece Bell.

At the beginning of the year I try to commit to a book challenge or two, but I have a tendency to forget about them come March.  I decided to create my own book challenge for 2018 so I can be held accountable.  I will be posting my picks on Instagram using #SewBookishReads18.  If you decide to join in on the fun, be sure to tag your book pics on Instagram so I can see your book choices!

I love getting the Year in Books e-mail from Goodreads.  There is something gratifying about looking at all of my reading stats for the year.  Out of the 234 books that I read this year, here are 15 of my favorites:

Book & Cookie Club is a one hour long book discussion for students in 3rd through 5th grade and an adult caregiver.  I have been facilitating this program since December of 2015.  It is one of my favorite programs because I get to come up with new activities, icebreakers, and discussion games every month!

THE BOOK
This month, we read and discussed Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda.

THE PLAN
I always like to start our meetings with an icebreaker.  Our icebreaker for this meeting was a cryptogram that uses a quote from The Lord of the Rings. 

After the icebreaker, we conquered the obstacle course.  I created five obstacles on one side of our program room.  Participants had to complete the obstacle, then spin the wheel on the Decide Now! iPad app. I programmed the wheel to have the numbers one through three on it.  If a participant spun the number 3, then they had to answer three questions about the book before they could move onto the next obstacle.



Obstacles:  

1. Don’t wake the spiders: participants had to crawl through a tunnel without touching any of the spiders.
2. Ball toss: participants used their non-dominant hand to toss ping pong balls into cereal bowls. This one proved to be a challenge, but the kids got creative in order to make it work!
3. Domino sort: participants made a set of 6 dominoes
4. Find the ball: I hid different colored wiffle balls underneath cones.  Participants picked a color and had to find that color wiffle ball under the cone.
5. Tic-Tac-Toe: participants had the option of playing against their grown-up or against a friend

Once everyone completed the obstacle course, we moved on to the book related activities.  

Activities:

1. Matchstick puzzles:  I used toothpicks for this activity because...matchsticks. I just did a Google search for "matchstick puzzles" and printed off one of the puzzles that I found. 
2. Word puzzles
3. Map making:  I found some neat ideas on Pinterest on fantasy map making so I printed off those ideas and displayed them.  We have this neat brown Kraft paper on a roll that we use to cover our tables and I thought it would be awesome to use for a fantasy map.  I put out black markers and black colored pencils.

I loved seeing the adults and their kids work together to solve the puzzles.  The maps that the kids came up with were amazing.  I could kick myself because I forgot to take pictures of their awesome maps.  Overall, it was a fun evening!

Next month, we will be discussing The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher by Dana Alison Levy!