Summer Book Club

Last year I did a book club for some of the girls Courtney's age who live in our neighborhood.  There are 4 girls in total and it was a lot of fun.  We read books by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond.  They wrote "If you give a mouse a cookie" and "If you give a moose a pancake."  We would take turns reading from the book, discuss what we had read and then cook whatever the story was about.  One week we made pancakes, another was cookies, another was muffins...and so on.  It was a lot of fun.

This year Courtney wanted to do it again.  One of the girls was diagnosed with food allergies so I decided to do something different this year.  So I found some Fancy Nancy books and decided to do crafts and sewing with those in mind.

Last week was the first week and we read "Fancy Nancy and the Pajama Party."  I had the girls come in pjs with their pillows.  We sat around and they took turns reading from the story.  When it was finished, we made pillowcase dress pajamas.  I had already cut them and sewn the arm holes, adding the ribbons to tie them with.  The girls were asked to bring ribbon which they learned to pin on the bottom of the pillowcase and then they took turns sewing the ribbon on.  It was hilarious and reminded me of the first time I tried to sew. 

One girls has obviously sewn before and got right to the pinning without any help.  She also needed very minimal help sewing on the ribbon.  It was a bit wavy but she did a great job.  The other girls, including Courtney, needed quite a bit of help but it was fun to help them figure it out.  In the end, they all had ribbon sewn on their pj dresses and it all looked great!

This week we read "Fancy Nancy and the Stars" which was about the night sky and constellations.  We made a fort so it was dark and then read the book by flashlight.  They really liked that.  We then made our own constellations from hole punches and glued the punches on a black paper.  While they were doing that, the girl who had a food allergy told me that she doesn't have it anymore and so we can "bake as many star cookies as we want!"  It wasn't on my plan but I thought it would be fun.  So they made sugar cookies and then we made paper 3D stars (which are super easy!).  I found the instructions here: http://lilliedale.blogspot.ca/2010/12/day-2-paper-stars.html and made a few so I would be able to help them.  They loved those and made a few each.

Then it was time to send them home with cookies, a constellation and some paper stars...but not until they had karaoked for a while.  Love these cute girls!