Mom & Me Book Club: "The Monster at the end of this Book"

We started hosting a Mom & Me book club after discovering this Mommy & Me Book Club website. They have such great ideas! We meet every other week for our book club and we follow the same the general pattern of circle-time, crafts, and activities as they do on the website. For this weeks Mom & Me Book club we picked the book, "The Monster at the end of this Book" by Jon Stone.  

Gathering Activity:

Keeping in the theme with Monsters we decided to have the kids make their own creative little monsters out of play-doh. They each got craft sticks, goggly eyes and beads to use as arms eyes or teeth. I saw this idea on this website. It was really fun to see what things they came up with. 

Circle Time:

During circle time we sang, "here we are together at Mommy & Me" and we sang through every child's name in attendance. Then we sang the "ABC's." (When we got to the letter of a child in the room they raised their hand and shouted their letter) Next we counted from 1-10 and back again from 10-1. Then we sang "If you're a Monster and you know it" (to the tune of if you are happy and you know it, but with monster things: growling, stomping...) Then we read the book, "The Monster at the end of this Book." We ended circle time by singing, "shake my sillies out" with the last line being, "tip toe my sillies out" as we tip toed over to the table for an activity.

Activity:

For our first activity we did a "don't turn the page" activity. We handed out several board books and let the children, using yarn, blocks and straws, attempt to make it so they could not turn the page. A few of the older kids actually accomplished this and everyone else just had a lot of fun knocking blocks onto the ground.

 

Activity:

For our next activity we played a version of "button button, who's got the button." Instead of a button we had a little toy monster that the kids passed around in a circle, while one kid left the circle and closed their eyes. We played "The Monster Mash" music as they passed the monster around and then paused the music. When the music stopped everyone put their hands behind their backs, including the person with the toy monster. Then the person who had their eyes closed got to come over and guess who had the monster and repeat. 

Craft: 

For a craft we made Grover monster faces. We found out how to make them at this website. We used paper plates as the base. We let the kids color a mouth with crayons and then they glued on shredded blue construction paper. Then glued on eyes and a nose on top of that. 

Show & Tell:
Each child also brings an item related to the book (if they can) for show and tell. They stand up in front of everyone, say their name, show what they brought and tell the group why is is related to the book or why it is special to them. 


Snack/lunch:

We made these fun monster sandwiches that we found at this website. We choose to use the black olives however, knowing that most kids would not eat the green ones. 

 And we also had some "lumber" pretzels, "rope" twizzlers, and "bricks" graham crackers. And many other fruits and fun snacks as well.

Mom & Me Book Club: The Grouchy Ladybug

We host a Mom & Me book club for Mommies and kiddos ages 3-6. Younger siblings generally tag along, but do not participate in the craft activities and such. For this week at Mom & Me Book Club we decided on the book, "The Grouchy Ladybug" by Eric Carle. We started hosting these book clubs after learning about this Mommy & Me Book Club website and we follow the general pattern of circle-time/crafts/activities, but this was the first time we picked our own book that was has not yet been done on the website. 

Gathering Activity:

Because the Grouchy Ladybug book goes through different times of the day, we decided to have the kids make their own paper plate clocks. We pre-cut out the numbers and different pieces for them to easily be able to glue on and and put together their own clocks. The kids used the clocks during the reading of the story and were able to move the hands to the times as were discussed in the book. 

Circle Time:

During circle time we all sang the song, "here we are together at Mommy & Me" and we sang through every child's name in attendance. Then we sang the "ABC's." Next we counted from 1-12 and back again from 12-1 (keeping in the theme with the clocks.) Then we read the book, "The Grouchy Ladybug." During the story we had the kids move the clocks to tell the time we were talking about in the book.  After we read through the book we did a sequencing activity where the kids all worked together to match clock times with the animals that the ladybug met. We got the photos for the sequencing activity on this website. Then we sang the song, "Ladybug" by Frank Leto. We ended circle time by singing, "shake my sillies out" with the last line being, "tip toe my sillies out" as we tip toed over to the table for a craft. 

Craft/Art Project:

For the craft we made construction paper ladybugs. We pre-cut the paper for the kids. For the body we had black circles and used slightly smaller red circles, cut in half for the wings. We used googly eyes and cut two small black strips of paper for the antennas. To make them curl you can wrap them around your finger or a pencil. The kids then got to use a black stamp pad with their fingers to put the dots on the ladybugs. 

Activities:

The first activity we did was "bug/animal freeze dancing." Every kid picked a bug or animal they wanted to pretend to be and we turned on ladybug themed music and let the kids crawl around or dance. Then paused the music for them to freeze and repeated. We only had time for one song for this activity and used, "Ladybug Picnic," but others that would have worked well include: ladybug ladybug, ugly bug ball, shoo fly, jitterbug, and rock around the clock.

For another activity we had a "Ladybug fight." We lined up the kids in two rows facing each other, (it ended up being more of a circle, but that works too) and we handed out little catapults that we had made previously. We found out how to make them at this website. Each kid got a catapult and a small pile of little craft pom poms or "Ladybugs" to fight each other with. The kids had a blast flinging them at each other. 

Show & Tell:

Each child also brings an item related to the book (if they can) for show and tell. They stand up in front of everyone, say their name, show what they brought and tell the group why is is related to the book or why it is special to them. 

Snack/Food:

For snack we had several ladybug themed foods along with foods that were black and red, and all the mom's attending brought something to share as well. We made this adorable grouchy ladybug watermelon with blackberries for the spots. 

 We also had these ladybug apples. using black berries for the heads and raisins for the spots. We used peanut butter to keep them in place.

Ladybug cupcakes with mini oreo heads, mini chocolate chip spots, and twizzlers antenna.