5 Children and It--Book Group

We had a lot of fun with this book by Edith Nesbit. Ryan and Cailin were the only ones who managed to read the whole thing. However, BBC produced a TV version that held quite true to the book, so the rest of us knew what was going on from the point that we didn't read.

For our literature lesson I compared recipes of cookies to essential elements of good literature. I pulled out cookbooks for them to find recipes of cookies and talked about what ingredients are needed to make cookies. We then discussed that there are some things that must be found in a book to make it a novel or story--plot, conflict, characters, theme, and setting. These are like the basics of a good cookie--flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and salt. An author can add in other elements, such as, onomatopoeia, alliteration, simile, imagery, personification, hyperbole, irony,....and other such elements to give variety and flavor to their story. In like manner we found many different cookies that used different enhancements too, such as, chocolate chips, nuts, lemon juice, raisins, bananas, oats, and so forth.

We had fun doing this comparison.

Afterwords, we read Peter Rabbit, to help the kids define and recognize what conflict and plot are (our specific topic of the month). Then on to discussing the book....5 children and It. A sand fairy or psaamead, is found by the four older children and he will grant a wish a day. The story is about all the wishes the kids make and how a seemingly harmless wish can turn into a great catastrophe. Our favorites were when their home is wished to be a castle, but the castle turns out to be under siege. Or the one about one of the boys, Robert, who is tired of being picked on by the baker's boy and wishes to be big. He then turns into a giant and gets his revenge, or does he?

They were asked to make their own wish and try to think how the psaamead would honestly fill the wish, but make it so that you wished you never asked for it in the first place.

Delaney wished to be able to read and write better, lucky for her, I can actually help her achieve this one on her own. Cailin wanted to have athletic prowess and strength. I'm sure he'd have fun with that....watch out wonder woman is here.

incorporating the butter for the scones has never been so fun before

The book is set in England and a couple of times the book tells of the kids having tea, so, that's what we had for our cooking snack too.... molasses scones and herbal tea. Amazingly the kids preferred the tea over apple juice, can't blame them, I too, enjoy peppermint tea.

Ryan and Connor prefer to read and discuss more complex books, or maybe they just don't want to be with us, anyhow, they read The Two Towers from the Lord of the Ring series. Barry was originally going to discuss with them, but the bed had too great a pull on his sleepy, weary, working midnight, head and he went to sleep for an extra nap before heading off to work. So I got to steal away from the main group and discuss with them. We had fun. I enjoyed talking with them about the book and listening to their thoughts, insights and perspective of the book and how they felt it applied to their lives. I'm once again amazed at my wonderful boys. I don't need a wish to make my life better, I'm pretty happy with what I've got! (Okay, I could think of a few things, but, I'm not going to press my luck.)