Last Christmas we Santa purchased this Roald Dahl book set at Costco for the children. (ahem)
I like books.
I like sets.
I love book sets.
I’m doing my best to brainwash my kids to love books (and sets) too.
It’s going pretty well so far.
We dove into the new Roald Dahl collection in January and this week we started our 10th book. I can’t believe it! The children are becoming more and more familiar with Dahl’s style of writing and our fun/calming morning read aloud time has morphed into an in-debth author study.
It’s pretty fantastic!
But how could I keep all the fun to myself?
I’ll be sharing a series of blog posts with fun activities you can do with your kids while reading The BFG aloud.
Our family loves to read aloud together! As tempting as it is to read the day away, I usually read about two chapters a morning (sometimes more…hehehe). Without rushing, we have finished each Roald Dahl book in about 2 weeks, or less.
I’ll be sharing 2-3 BFG read aloud activities in each post. You can pick and chose activities you want to do with your kids, and go at your own pace. You might want to read 5 chapters with your child and only pick one of the activities. You might want to do one chapter at a time and follow-up with our activities. I’ll give suggestions, but you do what works for your family. There is no wrong way to do this series!
Buuuuut I want you to keep these important “don’ts” in mind:
Don’t let these activities take away from the joy of reading the actual book.
Don’t become bogged down with these activities that you don’t read.
Don’t discount the power of books. Your kids will learn without activities… but they sure are fun!
In my opinion, the most important thing is that your children are looking forward to your read aloud time!
I designed some activities to do while you are reading aloud, some are printable sheets you can turn into a charter school (if that applies to you), some are for making family memories, some are simple conversations or writing prompts.
The BFG Read Aloud Activities:
(I suggest reading Chapters 1 & 2, back-to-back then doing these activities together.)
Chapter 1: The Witching Hour Activity
(Materials – black construction paper, yellow paper, scissors, glue stick, brown construction paper, 2 – 5.5 x 8” pieces of fabric, 2- 9” pieces of yarn and string, hot glue gun for a parent to use with the fabric.)
- Cut 2- 8.5” x 1” strips and 2- 7”x 1” from the brown construction paper.
- Glue strips onto the black construction paper to make a windowsill (rectangle in the landscape direction).
- Cut a small crescent from the yellow paper about 2” high. (white paper is pictured)
- Glue stick the moon in the top left of the sky.
- Hot glue the fabric to the top of the windowsill creating pleats as you glue. Leaving a it of space in between each curtain for the next lesson!
- Tie back curtains with the yarn.
Chapter 2: Who? Activity
(Materials – activity from last lesson, BFG printable on white paper, crayons, scissors, glue stick.)
- Color the BFG from the printable and then cut out.
- Glue the BFG to the windowsill so it looks like he is peering in from the outside and about to snack Sophie inside the orphanage.
Check back soon for more activities!