Our 1st Kids' Book Club-- The Hobbit

Last year I was very involved in a bi-monthly Knights of Freedom Club for Clark and a bi-monthly Liberty Girls Club for Bethany and Elinor. Both were very positive experiences for all, but this year I decided to simplify things a bit. We are doing a once a month book club for both 8-11 boys and girls.

We had our first meeting today and I dare say it was a smashing success! We read The Hobbit.

I took the structure of our meeting from my good friend Emily (www.messagesfromthemothership.blogspot.com). We are doing our discussion first, then having a snack and game having to do with the book. In this picture the kids are enjoying bacon and eggs because Bilbo was always dreaming of bacon and eggs in his hobbit hole.
We had quite a bit of rain today so we had to change one of our planned games to play it inside instead of outside. We played an inside version of "Capture the Arkenstone". We wrapped an apple in tin foil and "the hobbit" hid it somewhere in the house. The boys were the dwarves and the girls were the elves and it was a competition to see which team could find it first. Whoever found it got to be the next hobbit.





When Bethany hid it she was having such a hard time keeping it secret. It was driving her nuts. She is SO my daughter!













When the rain stopped we did go outside for "Smaug Tag". Smaug is the dragon guarding the treasure in The Hobbit. Smaug tag was a basically Candle Tag (which is similar to freeze tag). There are about 3,000 different versions of tag-- and all kids seem to know ALL of them.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE watching kids this age play running games outside. I love to watch how they work things out-- what game to play, who is it, what are the rules, what is fair, who is on who's team, how they work our disputes. It is really quite complicated business and I think we adults could learn a lot from them on how to get along with others.
We have a really fantastic group of kids in our neighborhood and they can run and play forever and it seems like everyone has a fun time.
The greatest game we came up with was the outside "Capture the Arkenstone" we were able to play after the rain stopped.
This is how it worked. The Arkenstone was in the middle of the trampoline. 3 or 4 dwarves were guarding it. Here are the first round of dwarves (note the beards).








Then the Elves (note the ears) had to try to get on the trampoline and get a hand on the arkenstone without getting tagged by a dwarf. If they got tagged they had to go to jail until a teammate rescued them.

I just ADORE these kids! Such personalities.

The Return of the Hobbit-- Book Club Begins Again!

Almost exactly nine years ago I hosted my first Kid's Book Club---"The Hobbit".  Clark was 10, Bethany was 8 and Elinor was 6.   We had so much fun and I look back so fondly on this group of kids-- some of whom have now started college.  Over the next eight years some kids came and went, but many families were staple members of the group.

Nine years later we read and discussed The Hobbit again.  Some of these awesome kids are the younger siblings of the original book club members.  My heart swelled again with love for these kids and we had so much fun.  Hosting the book club has been one of the true highlights of my homeschooling career.

 Way back when, the girls discovered a great way to be a dwarf in one of the games we played.

This week the girls made excellent dwarfs again!

"Smaug Tag" was just as much fun this time around.

Bethany is never far from the action at book club.  She still loves to play the games.

The dwarfs guarding the Arkenstone.

Strategizing on how to capture the Arkenstone.

We also played a game of finding the Arkenstone in the house.  The Hobbit hid it and everybody searched for it.  This picture is the mad dash to find it after it was hidden.

Greta loved watching the kids run and play.

The guys.

The gals.

Do you see little Fay-Fay on the left in her dance clothes?
I think the kids were doing elf ears.

We even had bacon and eggs, just like we did eight years ago.  Abe expanded "Bacon Wednesday" to include book club.
It was a very good day and I am really looking forward to a great year of book club.   

Halloween 2017 Photo Album

Halloween 2017!  There is no family theme and I don't feel even a tiny bit bad about it.  I love what the kids came up with.  I enjoy it other years when we do something all together as well, but this years was low-key and great fun.

I'm daunted at the thought of commentary on all these pictures, so, I'll just throw them up here and enjoy looking back at fun memories.

I adored Cannon as a Hobbit-- Frodo Baggins.  Cannon wore this costume to dance last week and some of the girls called him "The Hip-Hop Hobbit" and that just cracked me up.

George the mad-scientist.

Faith borrowed her Hermoine costume from the Schramms.  Many thanks!

Elinor went trick-or-treat with Sierra.  She is a gal in our ward with special needs who Elinor has really enjoyed since she was very young.  Elinor said it was one of her best Halloweens to get to go with Sierra.

I teased Beth Miles about wearing some spider earrings to Primary and she gave me this lovely spider ornament to wear as a necklace!  NEVER!

At a Halloween party at my cousin's house and my cousin Jason showed up as Gandalf to Cannon's Frodo!

Abe was sporting Clark's homemade Karate Kid shower costume.  Bethany made her jelly fish costume as well.

Peter's trick-or-treating was somewhat short-lived because he was... shall we say... not polite.  He would say trick-or-treat and thank you, but the problem was people would put treats in his pumpkin and he would take them out, hand them back and say, "Me not like that kind!"
Heaven help us.

The sign was Bethany's addition to Greta's costume.

He would have liked to worn his green froggy costume, but alas, it was too small.  He settled for the fire fighter costume, but his heart wasn't really in it.

D&D  on Halloween is ever so slightly more socially acceptable on Halloween than on other days of the year, so for one night, and one night only, it moved upstairs from the seclusion of the basement.

And finally, inspired by a photograph taken of Abe's family around 1984...

Abe is in the fetching plaid jacket on the right.
May I just say, I know the pain of outfitting a large family for a family photograph.  To find that many suit jackets and blazers that are the right sizes for that many little boys... my hat is off to my wonderful mother-in-law.

We used up a lot of parental capital in getting our teens to go along with this picture.  After the  Fox sweatshirt costumes last year, I was surprised there wasn't more outright refusal.   Truthfully, I though about mutiny myself, but it meant a lot to Abe and now that it's done, I admit, I like them.

The teens threw themselves a Halloween party.

Those are good odds for that lucky young man!

Extracurricular Saturday

Elinor tested for her brown belt in Tae Kwon Do this morning.  I was not there, but Abe and Elinor reported that she did great.   

She just loves it.

Bethany had her "Snow White" ballet performance this afternoon as well.  Her class were shadows in the woods and they danced beautifully.

The little boys stayed home with babysitters this afternoon because they're not really "ballet" material yet.  Elinor and Faith came with Abe and I and Grandma and Grandpa Cannon to the ballet.  Clark was gone all day with his PiPod friends on an adventure riding the Front Runner Train to up to Ogden to visit other PiPod friends who moved up North.  And this evening Abe and Clark are off to see The Hobbit, while I blog to my heart's content and watch Downton Abbey.  I was feeling very stressed out this evening and these last couple of posts have done wonders for my mental state tonight.