Earth Scouts & Book Club

We had our dual-meeting yesterday. It went well. I've been wanting to start a book group, so my kids would have a reason to read more. Not that they *should* need a reason to read, other than to read.. but mine do. :( So I decided on "George's Secret Key to the Universe" by Lucy and Stephen Hawking. This book seems to be good for the wide range of ages we have, from 5 to 15.

So anyways, I thought since all the parents mostly were in Earth Scouts, we'd just shorten that meeting by 30 minutes, then tack on the book group at the end. So instead of being at the library for 3 hours to do both, we're there just 2.5 hours. So this only added on an additional 30 minutes. I hope it works out OK.

First we had our Earth Scouts meeting. I wanted to do a little bit about Thanksgiving. So we read a little on the history of, the kids all enjoy having discussions. So they were calling out their thoughts and answering questions about harvesting, what types of food, etc. Then we did a journal activity. Some of the prompts were "Pretend you are a turkey and you need to convince your family why they should eat a different animal on Thanksgiving" or "Why would you NOT want to live in the 1600's". So for the next meeting, the kids can share what they've written. It should be quite entertaining.

Then it started snowing as we were breaking from Earth Scouts into the book club, so the kids were all outside running wild in the tiny bit of snow. he he That gave us mom's a chance to discuss meeting dates and such. So we've decided to change the day of the week hoping to alleviate some stress for some of them because there are too many things going on at once. So we'll give that a try for a month or 2 and see how it works out.

I think our first book club meeting went well. The kids that are into the book a few chapters seem to really enjoy it so far. Yesterday we just did some pre-reading things and discussed vocabulary. We found the first few words in the book since most of us had read through at least the first chapter. We talked about what some of the words meant. We had a discussion on why using an actual dictionary and not the Internet is important. he he So I think this is going to be lots of fun for us all.

Since my kids are older, I sometimes wonder if I talk above the younger kids, so to speak. Not that my kids and I have these super-intense-college-level-mega-serious-all-out-debate/discussions, mind you. he he But I sometimes think maybe the kids are thinking "man, what is this nut job talking about?!". The way they jump into discussions and bring up their own discussions, I think they are getting me just fine. And the cool part is that the other moms were taking part in the discussion too. So this isn't just a group for the kids, I think us moms will have fun as well. :D