This week's book club meeting had an "Around the World" theme. Each boy had to bring in three items that had tags listing where they were made. As they shared their items, we placed them on our map.
Look which country had the biggest pile of stuff ---- China of course. We had an interesting conversation about why so many things are made in China.
The book I chose for this month is a picture book that all of the boys probably read in preschool or kindergarten. It's a cute story about a little girl who wants to make an apple pie, but ends up travelling around the world in search of all the ingredients she needs.
Interestingly, although the boys at first thought the book was "babyish," we ended up finding four vocabulary words they didn't know. We looked them up in the dictionary and practiced reading them and remembering their meanings. Also, the boys were not able to locate the places the girl travelled on the world map. We had fun finding the places and labelling them with the appropriate flag stickers.
As a pre-reading exercise, I had them tell me their versions of how to make an apple pie. Yikes! Their recipe involved pouring water over the apples and baking them at 900 degrees for a few hours.
It was fun to help them see that we use reading for lots of things, including cooking and learning about the world with maps. I think they also gained an appreciation for the fact that "story books" are not just for babies.... and that they can delve deeper into their favorite stories now that they're a bit older.
After studying the book, we decided to start our own story about how to make chocolate chip cookies. We used a simple recipe and a map that showed natural resources and where things are grown. Each boy took one ingredient, found a place on the map where they could get that ingredient, and made up a little part of the story. I'm going to compile the story and have them illustrate it at our next meeting. It was a fun extension of the story idea and a way to get them looking more closely at a map and thinking about where their food comes from.
And, finally, of course we had to make apple pies! We worked together to make mini-apple pies for everyone.
They were yummy!
And here's a gratuitous shot of three little book club cuties looking fancy! They're just so cute and they like being on the blog! (My biggest fans!)
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