Elementary book clubs meet monthly and for 3 consecutive months, we focus on the same series. 

Each meeting follows the same format: discussion, small activity, big activity. 

For our first meeting, we talked about the George, Harold and how they created Captain Underpants.

This led into a discussion on imagination. 

If you haven't read Scholastic's Classroom Guide for this book series, it is a very beneficial resource to look at. 

Question 3 is copied from one of the sections. 

Imagination was a GREAT subject to talk about. Our group was very mixed about imagination being a good or bad thing. They each listed reasons/ examples of why it was/wasn't a good thing. Some changed their minds while discussing. 

For question 1, the answer was nearly a universal "inappropriate humor". Quotation marks included because that's exactly how one boy phrased it. 

Word Scrambles

As a group, for our small activity we scrambled simple words like "hamburger" and "waterfall" like George and Harold do in the books. 

This led up to our main activity which was rearranging school signs.

These were made with cardboard, letters printed and cut out on construction paper and lamination film scraps. 

This was the best way I could come up with for the kids to easily rearrange letters. 

There were 4 display boards that the kids went around the room and played with.

At the end, we walked around as a group and read what each other had made.

 

When you get new books at the library, what better way to get them checked out than to build an interactive table around them?

For this table, free-handed a race track on poster board.

Racecars were printed off and instructions were very simple: color a car, cut it out and then glue it to the track.

The poster board is actually double sided - there is a different track on the back. 

(It was painstakingly traced in colored pencil because of that. When you trace using a sharpie or a marker, it bleeds through to the other side, then I wouldn't have been able to do front and back.)

Of course, I also tried to throw in an educational concept too!

 

This year I made 2 poster boards to set out for the month of February. The individuals they focused on were Alice Ball and Charles Henry Turner.

 

I flipped through Vashti Harrison's Little Legends series for inspiration. 

Alice Ball is most known for creating a treatment for leprosy before antibiotics were invented. 

This treatment became known as the "Ball Method". It used oil extracted from a chaulmoogra tree seed and injected into a sick person.

The activity aspect of this poster board required kids to find a leaf from our outside garden to glue to the trees.

Charles Henry Turner is known for his study of insect behavior.

For his poster board, we tried our hand at drawing bumble bees.

Didn't manage to get any pictures of the my book displays or better snapshots of my tables.

These were both free-handed so no template to share but take the ideas!

For past BHM ideas, click the links below . . . 

28 Days of Black History Printable Booklets

Black History Month YA book display

 BOOKS

A Seed Grows by Anotoinette Portis is beautifully done. Sparse words accompany bold, clean sponge painted illustrations. This book is about the life cycle of a seed from birth to regrowth.

We Are The Gardeners by Joanna Gaines is also gorgeous and includes several good teachable moments.

SONGS

Oh Mr. Sun

Oh, Mr. Sun, Sun
Mr. Golden Sun
Please shine down on me
Oh, Mr. Sun, Sun
Mr. Golden Sun
Hiding behind a tree
These little children
Are asking you
To please come out
So we can play with you
Mr. Sun, Sun
Mr. Golden Sun
Please shine down on me

 

RHYME

There's Something In My Garden

There’s something in my garden,
Oh, what can it be?
Hear its funny sound
Let's guess and we'll see . . .

(And for this one, I'll make a funny sound, let the kiddos guess what it is, then pull out a puppet of the animal.)

Rain On The Rooftop (A Scarf Poem)

Rain on the green grass,
Rain on the tree.
Rain on the rooftop,
But not on me!
Because I have my umbrella!

(For the last line, we wave the scarves over our head like an umbrella)

Jump Like A Dog ACTION POEM

Jump like a frog,
stretch like a cat
Hop like a bunny,
and flap like a bat!
Wiggle like a worm,
slither like a snake 
Be a wet dog
and shake, shake, shake.