Another short and sweet craft/activity write-up today. For this months I Survived Book Club meeting, my coworker stepped in for me and led the discussion. However, I really wanted to share this cup racing game with you.

This was inspired by An Almost Unschooling Mom's blog post, which can be found here!

In this book, Paul Colbert is an 11 year old boy living in occupied France. One day, a carrier pigeon finds him crying on the road and leads him away into a clearing, where an Allied soldier, Victor Lopez, is trapped in a tree. Paul cuts Victor free of the tree and when Nazi soldiers and a dog come along, they hide together. Victor is wounded though and the dog, who can smell his blood, charges their hiding place. The carrier pigeon bravely distracts the dog by attacking it and forcing the dog to run off with the officers following it. The pigeon plays another role further along in the story, but I won't give it all away.

Because the carrier pigeon was such a fun character, when it came to finding a craft or activity for this book, this idea just clicked.

For this game, players created their own carrier pigeons with plastic cups. These were threaded  through a string, extended the length of the room and players could race them by blowing into the cup, making them fly.

 HOW TO:
This is super simple. As previously stated, I wasn't able to host book club, but my coworker said this activity went over very well.

1. Using a small plastic or paper cup, chisel a hole in the bottom for the yarn to be threaded through.

2. Print out wings and head to color and then cut out. Here's my PDF! (Bear in mind, I'm no professional. These were hand drawn, scanned and cleaned up in MS Office.... So no judgements.)

3. Tape wings and head to cup. Your bird will also need a secret message to help balance it out when it's suspended on the sting, so it doesn't flip upside down.

4. Thread a piece of yarn through it, running the length of the room.

5. Blow in the cup to make it move and race against other birds.

 First person to the other side of the room is the winner!

One thing that my coworker did say, is that she gave them the option to race their birds here or take them home to fly. If the kids wanted to take them home, she sent them home with a strand of yarn. Several raced their carrier pigeons at the library though.

And that's it!
Feel free to use my PDF for whatever you need and GOOD LUCK with your cup racing! If you try this idea out, let me know how it went 😀

 

The Research Robot was a passive program that encouraged kids to research using books set out on the table and as a rotating non-fiction display.

This display was changed weekly, with questions ranging from "Who painted the Mona Lisa?" to "How many moons does Jupiter have?" to "What did Paul Bunyan do for a living?".

Animal questions were the favorite though! But really, who's surprised by that?

Every Monday, a new question was put out with a selection of books that contained the answer.

The answer to last weeks question was always included on the new sign.

There was no prize for feeding your answer to the Research Robot, although SEVERAL kids asked.

Originally, the robot was a square box, covered in construction paper, cut to make him look robotic with a plain basket of answer sheets and pencils. Sad to say, but when he got a makeover, he generated a lot more attention!

Here are a couple pictures.