I Survived The Shark Attacks of 1916

Sometimes book dialogue comes naturally to the group and other times it doesn't. To help initiate and progress conversations, each meeting begins with discussing our favorite parts of the story. If every kid shares a scene from the book then right off the bat everyone is interacting and contributing to book club!

One of my favorite bits from I Survived The Shark Attacks of 1916 was about Hermann Oelrich, the rich shipping owner who is mentioned by Uncle Jerry. In this story, while out on a yacht with friends, Hermann jumps into shark infested waters and swam around to prove a point that sharks wouldn't attack a human. He yelled, splashed and caused a huge commotion in the water to attract the sharks but ultimately just scared them away. He offered a $500 ($12,000 in today's money) to anyone who could give a proven example of a shark attack on the Eastern Coast.

The group was very excited to hear that this was a true story and jump started our conversation to other topic points.

Of the 5 victims (Charles Vansant, Charles Buder, Lester Stilwell, Stanley Fisher and Joseph Dunn), I was only able to find 3 pictures. These were printed off and used in our discussion to help connect the story to real faces. Most of our discussion was talking about each attack individually.

This game was inspired by Battleship.The objective of this game to blast (remove) your opponents sharks out of the water (table) first. First team to do this, wins. This is accomplished by tossing in dynamite (red bean-bags) into the water towards your opponents sharks.
Set up: 
1.Taped off grid on a spare table with painters tape.

•  This included 4 squares that were marked off separately with tape.

2. Made 10 bean bag sharks in 2 different colors (5 of each).

• These were made with felt and rice. Edges were hand sewn together.

3. Covered small pieces of cardboard with painters tape and attached to table.

• >These blockers just make the game a little harder 😄

Game Play:    

• Divide into 2 teams and place sharks strategically on the board

• One player at a time, use the bean bags (our were hearts and angry birds from another program), knock your opponents shark out of the water.
• First team to clear the board of the opposing sharks wins.

Special Squares:
The 4 squares marked off separately with tape cannot be used to place sharks in when setting the board.

If a shark is knocked into this square by a team member, the opposing team is given the opportunity to resurrect one of their own sharks, moving one shark from the floor to back into gameplay.

Review:
This game was so much fun! In 1916, after Joseph Dunn was nearly killed by the shark, Matawan Creek was dynamited. The story for this game to pretend like the red bean bags were dynamite and blow the opposing teams sharks out of the water.
The group went through the game several times before deciding that they wanted to play tournament style, which we did!

The cardboard blockers lasted until about the third game but they provided the perfect challenge to make this game great.