mother-daughter book club

Each month, Michelle, Ella and I head to Kearns Library for a mother-daughter book club. We go with my friend Becky and her daughter which makes it fun because we have friends with us. And the book club is fun. We start out discussing the book, then the girls make some kind of craft that is connected with the book, and then there is a treat. Tonight the girls got a ticket every time they made a comment and then at the end there was a drawing and each girl got a free book and two also got Girl Scout Cookies. (Michelle was so excited about hers that she read half of it after getting home from book club...which is great, although it means she went to bed a bit later than she should have.)

This month we read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh. I've read it before, but not since I was a kid. We usually listen to the books on CD as we drive to and from school since our days are pretty busy and they have fairly heavy reading loads for school. It lead to a great discussion... Mrs. Frisby's courage and determination to help her family...even going so far as to visit the owl to get advice, visiting the rats to seek help, and sneaking into the Farmer's house to put the sleeping powder in the cat food. She was a wonderful mother. We had some discussion on the rats' stealing and whether stealing is ever okay or if it matters the size of the stealing and why the rats even became cognizant of the fact that they were stealing. I enjoy hearing what my kids have to say, both as we listen to the story and as we discuss it at the library. Sometimes they are a bit shy and don't say much at the library, but sometimes they have insights that impress me.

Tonight's craft was to make a stuffed felt mouse. There was felt cut in the shape of a mouse. Then you added eyes, ears, a vest, a tail, etc. and stuffed it. They came out quite cute.

I love that we are reading books that we might not read together otherwise. We've been going for about a year and some of the books we've read are:
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, True...sort of, Rules, Moon over Manifest, Babymouse, The Magic Thief, The Night Fairy, Igraine the Brave, and Emily's Fortune.

I absolutely love reading, and I am happy to share this experience of reading and talking about books with them. I hope that as they grow, they will love reading as much as I do.