Bookworms Book Club - Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs!

This was our last Bookworms Book Club meeting for the school year, and what a great year it has been!

This month we read: Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems

This is a great example of a fractured fairy tale, putting a twist on the traditional Goldilocks and the Three Bears story.

In Willems' version, the dinosaurs make chocolate pudding instead of porridge, so naturally, we had chocolate pudding cups as our snack!

Yum!

We had such a great time reading through this book together because there is so much see! Just check out these endpapers:

These made everyone laugh!

There are also plenty of good dinosaur jokes:

"Wipe Your Talons"

And of course, we hunted for, and found, the Pigeon! Can you find him hiding in this page?

(check the cookie jar!)

After we finished reading our book, we quickly skimmed through this traditional version of the tale by Byron Barton:

Next, it was time to compare and contrast! (yes, I used to be a Language Arts teacher) I like using visual aids, so we drew a big Venn diagram on our dry erase board:

We talked about what was the same in the two stories (i.e. Goldilocks, three of everything - animals, bowls, chairs, beds, etc.) and what was different (Dinos vs. bears, etc.) The children really did a great job with this, and thought about things such as the characters' intentions in both stories, as well as their actions.  There was definitely some critical thinking going on!

Next, we brainstormed other fairy tale stories to which we would like to add dinosaurs.  Here are some of the titles we came up with:

Dinorella
Beauty and the Dinosaur
Sleeping Dinosaur

Snow White and the Seven Dinosaurs

If you had more time, it would be great to have kids draw a cover page for one of these fractured fairy tales!

Next, it was time to get up and play! Since Goldilocks couldn't find a chair to sit in, I thought we should play Musical Chairs! This was so much fun!

We even used a dinosaur song: We Are the Dinosaurs by the Laurie Berkner Band

As the kids got "out," they were handed a goodie bag (leftover SRP prizes from previous years), so there were really no hurt feelings about losing.

Next was our craft, which we actually ran out of time for and didn't get to do! This was a little sad because I spent quite a bit of prep time tracing and cutting out pieces, but I suppose I'll just have to save them for another time.

Here is my Dinosaur Suncatcher (thank you, Pinterest!)

The outline of the dinosaur is cardstock, stuck to a sheet of clear contact paper.  You fill in the inside with pieces of tissue paper, and the close it up with another sheet of clear contact paper, and cut out your dinosaur! Voila! I think he's pretty cute!

I did have time to have the kids vote on their favorite books that we read this year and here are the results:

Easiest to Read: TIE between The Hallowiener by Dav Pilkey and Fancy Nancy Sees Stars by Jane O'Connor

Funniest: We Are in a Book by Mo Willems

Favorite: Green Eggs and Ham by good ol' Dr. Seuss!

This was such a great year for this little book club that could.  Looking back, I had very consistent attendance all year long, and such enthusiastic little readers! I can't wait to get started on planning next year's meetings! See you in September!