Family Book Club Announcement

FTC Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links.*

Do you know why I never sleep, folks? It’s because I wake up at three in the morning with amazing ideas like this one.

If you’ve been following our blog for any length of time, you know that we are a family of readers. We love, love, love books. Books are a huge part of our homeschooling process. I will often read a book aloud to my little poppies and then create opportunities for learning based on the book. I incorporate writing, math, science, history, art, music, and much, much more. Learning with your library card, folks!

Today it occurred to me that we could share this process with our My Little Poppies community by hosting a virtual family book club over at our brand new My Little Poppies Facebook group. C’mon over if you’re interested, folks!

The idea is still evolving in my mind but I am so excited about it that I wanted to share it with you today. This is my gift to you guys on this Valentine’s Day. I hope you are as excited as we are!

At this moment, here’s what I think it will look like…

Initially, I thought I’d use chapter books but I know how tricky those can be with a family. Children read at different levels, have varying attention spans, and life can get in the way of finishing a chapter book by a certain date. I have three children (6, 5, and 3 years) and I get it.

Instead, I plan to use some of our favorite picture books. We will cover one book per week. I will announce the book ahead of time so that you have plenty of time to get to the library. Additionally, I will provide you with ideas for exploring the book in more depth with your children, including activities, crafts, experiments, and links. Throughout the week, we will use the My Little Poppies Facebook group as a place for discussion.

What are my hopes for this group? I would like it to be a space to share a love of reading. I want to encourage families to read aloud together, as I believe it is the single most important thing you can do to help your child later in life. These read alouds and activities will allow you to spend more time together as a family, learning joyfully. The activities will help you take your read alouds to the next level while also fostering reading comprehension, creativity, and love of learning. I also think this group would be a pretty neat way to build upon the already fantastic My Little Poppies community that I love so much.

I think this forum could be oodles of fun. Will you join us? We’d love to have you! If you know other families who would want to join in the fun, please send them our way.

Also, once I get my act together over here, I’m going to e-mail subscribers ahead of time with a sneak peek. I’ll include a list of the books we’ll be covering each week so that you have plenty of time to get to the library, supplies needed for the activities, and more. I loathe spam so I promise you won’t be getting any from me.

I already have our first book planned and it’s a perfect one for this winter! The inaugural book for Family Book Club @ My Little Poppies will be…. (enter drum roll):

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

I’ll give you some time to get the book from the library, so let’s officially start book club next Saturday (Feb. 21, 2015). You are welcome to drop me a line before the start date, folks. I’d love to know that we aren’t reading this book alone- ha ha! If you know of others who may be interested, please point them in my direction. Here’s the Family Book Club at My Little Poppies trailer:

If you can’t get to the library and don’t have the book already, it’s a classic and would be a worthwhile addition to your collection:

What else do you need, besides the book? I’m going to send out an email to subscribers to give them a heads-up about materials needed for activities (once I decide on the activities, ha ha!), but each of my little poppies will have a notebook for book club so that they can keep all their writing and drawings in one place. I like these composition notebooks from Mead because they have large lines for kids K-2 level, plus space to draw on every page.

Happy reading!!

Cait

PS. The Family Book Club at My Little Poppies is on Pinterest, where you will find oodles of pins for bibliophiles!

Follow Cait Fitz @ My Little Poppies’s board Family Book Club @ My Little Poppies on Pinterest.


*FTC Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Basically, if you click on these links and make a purchase, I will receive small commission (we’re talking cents, not dollars). I would never endorse a product for a few cents. We recommend what we love here, folks.

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Caitlin Fitzpatrick Curley

Cait is a school psychologist, mom to three amazing children, and an unexpected homeschooler. She loves nature, good books, board games, strong coffee, and dancing in her kitchen. You can read about all of these things and more at My Little Poppies.

Cait co-hosts The Homeschool Sisters Podcast and is co-founder of Raising Poppies, a community for parents of gifted and twice-exceptional children. Cait is also founder of the Family Book Club at My Little Poppies, a fantastic community of book-loving parents and the Gameschool Community at My Little Poppies, a vibrant community of gameschoolers.

Cait is a contributing writer for Simple Homeschool and GeekMom. Her work has also appeared on The Huffington Post, The Mighty, and Scary Mommy. You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram
and G+.

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