Things to Accomplish before Saturday 9/26

Nelson will start writing our story. One or two pages max. Mainly introduce the setting and character(s). Characters can be developed later on in the story. 

Finish reading Traveling Book Club book: "Small Steps". Write new words down on cards. 

Don't forget to turn in your one and only club logo design!

Read 4 Fun Book Club T-Shirt Design Contest

Today we had an art class. Oh yes, by the way, I teach the same group art lessons. How blessed am I? If we have to have visions(which in many cases, we do), they've got to go above and beyond indoor activities. I plan to take them to places so we get more inspired. Nature, God's creation, man-made creation, events, fairs, museums, exhibits. No matter where we go, we just have to go as a team, stimulate our senses, and let the experiences guide us. 

We'll go to places.

We'll go as a team.

Team needs uniforms.

Fun uniforms like t-shirts.

T-Shirts with logos. 

Read 4 Fun Club logo!

Six kids will create a logo for our club. The winning design will go on our T-Shirts. Yay! 

The deadline is this coming Saturday, a week from now. This page will be updated with the results. Stay tuned!

 

No Pressure Writing/Presentation Assignment

What Inspired me?

This summer, my kids and I went to Washington DC for a week. Before our trip, I did some homework on places of interest. Since DC is rated top 10 most kids friendly cities in the States, it wasn't that hard to know where we should go. Well during the search, I stumbled upon National Gallery of Sculpture Garden website. 

Immediately I thought how nice it would be for kids to read some information on the 
website, pick their favorite sculpture and talk about it? Hence the assignment:

1. Pick one or two sculptures of your choice.
2. Write the following:

• Name and title of the sculpture
• What is it made of?
• Brief intro of the artist (name, nationality, specialty)
• What do you see and feel?
• Why do you like/dislike it

3. Everyone will share it next club time. Pay close attention to how you present what you write. Show enthusiasm. Nobody likes it if the presenter is not connected with the audience.

It's something short and sweet hopefully. That's why I call it "No Pressure Writing/Presentation". We'll see how it goes!

The benefit of Book Club Blog

Yay! I have now caught up with my book club starting from this summer. Too many reasons to start a blog about the club. The most beneficial for kids, parents and I at this moment is: I plan to have kids take responsibilities by reading the blog every week for activities we'll do together. No more serious business through wechat from now on! Parents, you are set free! But if your child is missing club time because he didn't finish home assignment, please don't bite me. :)

Summer Session Graduation Celebration

Sorry for lacking of better word. If you think of a good way to give a title. Please don't be shy. Leave it in comment box below.

I'm calling it graduation. We need a sense of achievement. Completion seems an understatement. These kids could've played the whole summer, gone to movies, parks, road trips, zoos and museums, ALL summer long. But they chose to come my club, MY club, out of all other places, EVERY Wednesday. It's not just a mandatory thing now. Ashley would refuse another invitation because she has a fun club planned already. My heart just melted with cheese when I heard that. No kidding.

SO...what will we do? How will we celebrate it?

I thought about giving them awards. Does everyone have to have one? I decided no, well, I'm thinking about my 8-year-old son. I'll give him a participation award. For now at least. Maybe parents are all tough to their own child. And we have reasons to. 

My wonderful artsy colleague Chuck was so creative and nice to actually bake me a sample medal the day I told him about my plan. 

Here it is:

I was amazed! Then we thought about promoting the idea and selling them to the world. But that's another blog. :) 

I use clay, so this is the final product. 

On the party day, kids were so happy hanging out together, eating, and getting this most precious award necklace ever. I know, I have to give myself praise with that. 

No, I'm really proud of them. We did it! And our bond is stronger than ever! My son Aiden's best friend is Nelson now. That's made official through nights and nights sitting and rolling on the floor together. He started to look out for Nelson too when he almost tripped over a table once.

Lots of things start small in life. It's like a snowball, when you roll it, you never know how big it can become. 

A Brilliant Idea --- Children Reviewers

One day I talked about book club with my colleague, a history PHD and book editor and reviewer for major publishing companies. Two things I remembered so vividly so that I'm compelled to write them down now. Something to hope for later. 

He wished someone was doing the same when he was little. What an encouraging compliment to say huh? 

He recommended kids to start writing reviews and post them online. Who knows, the publishing companies may look for them for more reviews in the future. Reviews from a child's perspective. Think about how influential that could be! Guess that's why "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" became so popular there were girl version that came out after. 

Hopefully we will get on that track, and who knows, soon they may get free books to read! 

Hmmm, should I pay for his idea? Shhhh......

Amazing Book Shelves

Stumbled upon these book shelves today. How cool! 

Tree of knowledge.

Two things we can't live without
Books and Music

Pick a book on your way to somewhere.

A playground or bookground?

A Book House

Organize your books with categories?

Hey, a cushion might be even better. Put your legs up!

Two book worms perfect for each other. 

Maybe more for decoration than function.

Talking about storage 

This gets even better. Wow! Now I'm getting jealous.

What a nice side coffee table and book shelf!

Hmm, I get the idea, but.....

Now THIS is more comfortable. A foot rest please?

About Presentation

Kids showed up at the meeting. First thing we were going to do is having them tell the story of what happened in their summer camp. While they were preparing it at home. I searched online and borrowed this rubric for kids presentation. It's just the beginning of sharing stories, so I went easy on them. They'll just read the story they wrote. Here is the rubric. 

Everyone talked about their story. Some were longer than others. But they all did a good job! Well, by "good job", I meant they took the time to write a story, and they read it. Three months later, I can't remember any of the details of the story except my own kids' only because I was part of the preparing process not because of the way they told the story. So that's the evidence of not impacting your audience by thrilling them with your enthusiasm and fascinating plot. Or maybe life is just not all that exciting in general. Just kidding! What am I talking about? We should all eat life, AND share it in a killer story telling way! 

Then we looked at the criteria for a good story sharing. They each became a little teacher critiquing others' work. What they lack of include eye contact, voice, and pace. I started to emphasize on engaging audience and helping them hear what the story teller is saying. I'm not worried since we'll have plenty of chance to practice later. Stay positive, captain!

Intensive Reading

Parent Request

We discussed another book in our third club session. When the session ended, parents got together and talked about how it went. One spoke about how she wished her son to focus on a short article, and we can test how much he grasped the content. In college years ago, we called it intensive reading. In the States, it seems to be a standard way of teaching language arts. 

Magazine Articles --- Great resource for short readings

I decided to give it a try. Coincidentally I borrowed some kids magazines from library. I picked an article about sleeping and it's called "Secrets of the Night". It has all sorts of fun facts about night. 

"Nocturnal animals aren't the only ones who are active at night. " 

"Human spend a third of their lives asleep." 

"Flowers in the hot, dry desert open up at night, when sun can't dry them out." 

"Brain works hard at night sorting through thoughts, emotions, and memories. Blood flows to fuel the parts of your brain that do this processing, helping you make sense of what happened during the day, store memories, and even solve problems. If anyone ever told you to think about a decision by 'sleeping on it,' they were right!"

Competition is On!

I was learning along with them. The amazing circadian cycle makes our body function the way it's designed to. I easily came up with dozen quiz questions for kids to answer. Competition was on! Boys dig this kind of activity. They feel good when they are ahead of the game. The only downside is it's making me feel gettin' old. By the quiz time started, I could remember half of the answers, and couldn't think as quick as they did. Boo hoo!

We read a couple of more articles of different kinds, fiction and nonfiction. My 11-year-old girl and I would read some articles together and talk about them. A great way not just reading but sharing thoughts and spirits together. 

 

For boys, I used these:

 

They really enjoyed it. It takes pressure off from having to read the whole book before we discuss anything. It's like a nice stop on the bridge where you still get to enjoy a beautiful view, and sometimes fun one too. It also gave me opportunity to pick the winner of quizzes as a reward category. Everyone is good at something, but not everything. It's nice to have a variety of rewards so no one feels incompetent, yet no one is convinced they know it all.

Story Writing and Traveling Book Club

Homework for Second Meeting
Before the second meeting, I wechatted parents about the assignments kids need to complete. It's summer. All they have from school is two pages of math, and one page of reading log. Not much at all comparing with what I had 20 years ago! Knowing they can probably sleep on it, I asked them to do the following:

1. Write something funny/awkward/touching/meaningful happened in summer camps. 
2. Read the book "The Seeing Stone". Make sure to write down new vocabulary words.
3. Read a favorite book of yours, and make a presentation on the book. A.K.A, book report. It needs to include character, setting, theme, plot, and literary techniques. Use paper, PowerPoint, Prezi, anything you want.

Yes, they probably slept on it. 

Allow me to explain why I came up with #3. First, I hadn't figured out a way to efficiently pass books around by the time the homework was assigned. I only found two hard copies of "The Seeing Stone". Thank God we live close by, otherwise it creates such a burden on the parents trying to get books to kids. Did I mention earlier, these parents are super supportive?! But I feel for them. So I decided to have kids read their own books at the times when the shared book is not around. On anther note, how to make them accountable? Presentations! Book reports! Do they like it? I don't know about others, but my 8-year-old hates it. I'll talk about him later. One chapter won't be enough. Hopefully by the end of those chapters about him, he becomes an active learner and writer. There's always hope.

But #3 turns out to be one of the best ideas ever. It led me to think about giving computer lessons on using presentation tools such as PowerPoint and Prezi. Kids this smart can figure out how to use a tool in an hour. There is a lot to these tools though. What kids lack of is the critical thinking process, and how to utilize the tools and make it work for an specific topic, theme and idea, and most importantly how not to read off bullets, is something else beyond their age can handle. And that's when,our involvement, kicks in. 

Group Writing

There is one other thing I've had in mind, and sounds like a huge project. It turned out to be as well. Having kids write a story together, then do a puppet show. Three months passed, we are now at the planning and writing stage. Maybe it's time to do more research online on creative group writing.

I felt kids need to have some guidance on elements of plot. So I shared an easy example here:

http://www.slideshare.net/mrswjohnston/elements-of-plot-cinderella

I had them draw from numbers. Unfortunately my son chose #1, which is probably why we still haven't started the group writing game yet. He needs inspiration! Or motivation, depending on how positive we are about this little fella. This is how it works: First person starts writing the beginning of a story, when he's done (and probably about one page or so), the writing is sent to #2 to write. It can get as creative as you can imagine, AND a disastrous one too at the same time. It's their first joint effort, and I call it writing game. Only in this game, nobody loses. 

We spent sometime to brainstorm ideas. They came up with the genre: suspense. Character, boys and girls, no more than five, I guess. And they want the story to happen in woods. Hmmmm.....

Traveling Book Club

During second week of our book club. I was dumbstruck when introduced to this amazing resource at the library. It felt like Columbus discovering a new continent. I kid you not. That's how I felt. 

Library website below shows how traveling book club runs.  http://cms.leoncountyfl.gov/Library/Library-Services/AdultServices/For-the-Reader/Traveling-Book-Club

The rabbit in green would be me:

Frame Credit: Many thanks to Free Photo Frames: http://www.free-photo-frames.com/index_9.html

This means we no longer need to run around sending books door to door. All the pressure now is on me. I need to make sure books don't get lost. Well, my supportive parents won't do that to me, and I'm positive.

More on the first Traveling Book we shared later.

Educational Games (Must have)

Games to Purchase

One of the takeaways from other book club founder websites is games. I decided to share the cost among families. They all are very supportive(bear with me, but this word will become the most frequently used word in my blog, and you'll know why). I bought five educational games from Amazon, and they turned out to be the greatest ice breaker and energy booster ever, let alone their academic functions each game specializes in. There are Synonyms, Blurt, Speed Grammar, Reading Comprehension Card Games, and You Have Been Sentenced! We have played three of them so far. Kids love getting points for making up meaningful sentences, guessing what a word is from the description, and calling out synonyms. Synonym game is the most difficult one of all. Even for a simplest word "open", it's hard to think within a minute what words could replace it.

Use Words Given to Come up with Sentences



Guess Words from Description

Grammar

Reading comprehension is recommended for kids from 8 to 10 years old. The level seems very basic though. I wouldn't suggest kids that are in gifted class play it. It's just not challenging enough. Be aware, it needs a bit of ground work also. It comes in a handbook! You would need to cut pages out. Cutting and organizing paper and game board takes time so if you were like me, who has ten things in mind or hands simultaneously, the book is not for you. Highly recommend Blurt, Synonyms, and You've been Sentenced. Here is the seller's blurb from "You've been Sentenced!":"This is the first game in history to really turn making sentences into a very funny, playable and challenging game." Blurt is also difficult and you really have to invest interest in everything to win. A child who knows what weapon to use at war may not know what a pendant is. 

When to play games?

It seems like a silly question. But designing your instructions and working at a optimal pace has been very crucial to me. To keep the club casual, we all sit on living room's floor. It then created this free to move, roll, jump on and off couch type of tendency among kids. I don't blame them. I would do the same if I were a kid. When you talk about half an hour of intense vocabulary and discussions, the enthusiasm wears off very soon. So I usually start a game when kids' minds are exhausted from talking about books, and learning new words, etc. Sometimes we don't get to play games because we have quizzes on an article as a way to compete, and that actually keeps kids occupied and interested throughout, especially the boys. 

Roles in playing games

Kids continue to surprise and inspire me. When a child would always prefer either not to participate or to play as a narrator, it's because she doesn't like to be humiliated by the "smart" ones. Some tend to get more competitive then others. The winners tend to think more for themselves and are less considerate for others. Personality traits play a big role in these interactions and we, as facilitators, need to be careful and wise while organizing these sessions. Balancing the level of kids and keeping everyone challenged and engaged has always been my pursuit.