When I first started homeschooling my children, I used a writing curriculum called Brave Writer. Though we didn’t use the curriculum in full, or for all of our years homeschooling, there was one practice from the curriculum that our family loved doing and that really helped to encourage and celebrate reading in our home: Book Parties.
Book Parties are exactly what they sound like - parties that celebrate the books your family has read together, usually as family read-alouds. For struggling readers, book parties can be a fun way to help get children more interested in reading. For children who already love reading, book parties are a great way to help extend their reading into related activities and join up with other book-loving friends.
Organizing a book party is easy and begins with a book that your children are reading. Not every book lends itself to a full-blown party but children’s novels and chapter books usually work very well. Once your family has finished a book, you can begin planning the party.
Each book party will be as unique as the book it’s based on but all parties usually have a few items from each of the following categories that are directly inspired by the book:
- food and drink
- activities plus discussions
- decorations
Let’s use an example with the book Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White which tells the story of a brave pig, a caring spider, and the value of friendship.
If you were to create a book party for Charlotte’s Web, your decorations might include a large spiderweb and spider, a bale of hay, recreating the barnyard door on a wall, or some barn animal posters.
For food, you could serve food mentioned in the book like pancakes, bacon (halal of course!), farm fresh eggs, and a prize-winning pie.
Book-inspired activities might be painting a watercolor spider webs, a STEM challenge where your children have to use popsicle sticks to design their own barn or pigpen in under a certain time, creating homemade bookmarks with pictures and favorite quotes from the book, or even getting together with friends to watch the movie version of the book. In fact, inviting friends to your book parties is a great way to amp up the fun and get your children excited.
If you find yourself struggling for ideas, invite your children into the planning. Sometimes they can come up with beautiful ideas that adults would never think of. Taking a role in the planning can also help children get excited about throwing more parties and of course, reading more books.
Melissa Barreto is a home educating mother of five children and the Co-Founder of Wildflower Homeschool Collective, a homeschool organization based in Northern New Jersey.
Add new comment