About 6 months ago, I announced that I would be writing a post every other week that would follow my “Chapter Books To Read To Little Boys” series.
Ha.
In 6 months, I managed to pump out one.
One. In 6 months.
Are you interested in my excuses? 1. I was pregnant and it was hard sitting on the floor to read a book to my kids. 2. Difficult pregnancy was followed by a baby. 3. I was and still am super tired. 4. My kids are lucky that they are even fed, much less read to. 5. I wanted to write about other things instead. 7. I ignored the nagging voice in my head telling me to fulfill my bloggy promises. 6. I eventually forgot about the series.
Well, guess what…now that the fog of newborn exhaustion stupor has lifted, I am able to read a book to my boys again. And I finally remembered – like yesterday – to not be a liar and to start writing on the series again.
So here we are, on Book #2: “My Side Of The Mountain, by Jean Craighead George.”
If there was ever a book written that spoke right to the very soul of my 2 boys, it is this one. Basically, a kid gets tired of living in the city, he heads to the mountains with just a couple of gadgets, and spends 2 years living in a treehouse and living off the land. After finishing this amazing book, I seriously expected to wake up the next morning and discover that my 2 boys had headed off to live in the woods behind Wal-Mart with their super-safe blunted pocket knife and a bag of Goldfish.
The book was that good.
As promised, here are some fun games and activities that correspond with the book. (Keep in mind, though, that this was a longer chapter book with like a million chapters, so there isn’t an activity for every chapter. Instead, I am just listing some activities that you can pick and choose from to do throughout the book.)
“My Side Of The Mountain” – Activities and Games
- Collect a pile of acorns. Break them open and grind the meat with a rock to make flour for acorn pancakes, just like Sam did in the book.
- Draw your dream tree house.
Rudy took this a step further and actually drew the instructions for how to build his dream tree house. Ha!
- Pretend that you are headed off to live in the woods for 2 years by yourself. You can pack only 5 things in your backpack to bring with you…what would you bring?
Only the essentials: baby sister’s blanket, toy phone, Mickey Mouse book, legos, and his drawing of a pirate ship.
- Write a letter to your mommy and daddy to let them know how your adventure in the mountains has been.
- Make a feast using only “food” from your backyard. Get creative using sticks, leaves, and even bugs to design a delicious spread. (obviously, don’t let your kiddo really eat it)
- Make a chart that lists on one side of your paper all of things that you would miss from your house and on the other side all of the things that you wouldn’t miss. You can either write each item out or draw each item.
- Printout this picture of a falcon. Go outside and collect as many bird feathers as you can find (or use craft feathers) and glue them onto the picture.
- Make a campfire craft: Collect some small twigs and glue them onto the bottom of a piece of paper in such a way that they resemble logs for a campfire. Shred pieces of orange, red, and yellow construction paper and glue them so on so that they look like the flames.
- Use supplies from around the house (bungee cords, boxes, hooks, etc) to design your own squirrel trap. Construct it in the backyard!
He tied a string around an acorn and arranged it in such a way that a brick would fall on the squirrel when it tried to eat the acorn. Sorry, PETA.
- Lay on a blanket in the backyard. Close your eyes and listen to all of the different animal and bug noises. Which noises can you identify? Which ones sound the prettiest? Which ones sound like a warning to stay away?
This was my favorite activity of all. Precious! And my boys loved it.
In addition to the games that we played throughout the book, I also had my boys keep a fun notebook. After each reading, I would have them draw a picture of one scene from the portion that we had just read. They would add these pictures to their notebook, and at the completion of the book, they had a fairly comprehensive collection of drawings!
I hope that you and your children enjoy this book as much as we did. Having had so much fun with it makes me excited about being back on track with reading chapter books again. 🙂
Related posts that you might enjoy:
- Series: Chapter Books To Read To Little Boys – “My Father’s Dragon”
- Fun Fall Craft To Do With Your Kids
- What To Do With My Toddler While I’m Homeschooling My Older Ones
- 3 Awesome Movies, 3 Fun Games
