We then went on to play Newspaper Bingo, borrowed from Thrive After Three's program (http://thriveafterthree.com/2014/04/25/geronimo-stilton/). Amazingly the kids loved this part. We had them work in groups of any size to search for the various parts of the paper. Hindsight being 20/20, we should have gone over the parts of the paper with the first group. Many didn't know what an editorial or letter to the editor was. Once we had one group that had found all nine parts, we let them loose to explore their other options. We did have them help pick up their left over newspapers, scissors and glue sticks.
Craft: Newspaper Art
We put out white construction paper, newspapers, and oil pastels and the kids could create whatever they wanted.
These were the samples we showed them:
The kids put their own spin on it and made simple, unique pictures.
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| The bottom, green structure became Pac-Man's house. |
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| This became a kitty, the only one to copy one of our samples. |
Craft: Rock Mouse on Cheese
We used left over rocks and scrap felt and yarn to create these adorable mice. The sponges were purchased from Dollar Tree.
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| Super Mouse with his cape. |
We also had a variety of coloring and activity sheets available for them from the Geronimo Stilton website.
Evaluation:
Overall this was a very easy, low key program. The kids were excited as many of them love reading the books and those kids that had not yet graduated to the this series got a good feel for them from the video clip. The newspaper art went fine, but I think the kids would have benefited from a little more direction (even though we had sample ideas posted) and room to spread out. The tables were super crowded and glue got everywhere! The mice were a huge hit and the kids got creative with them. One kid even gave his mouse a cape.
Attendance: 28, 18