Diary of a Wimpy Kid Event

There’s not much to say about the phenomenon of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.  Jeff Kinney has created a series of books that kids are dying to read; epseically boys and that’s awesome!  We decided to host an event at this time of the year because the last book was just published in November of last year and we wanted the kids to have some time to read it before we hosted an event.  We geared our program to 3rd – 5th graders, but had plenty of parents asking if their 2nd graders could come to the event!  And the best part was that we had a senior in high school ask us if she could do something with the library as part of her senior graduation project and was very interested in this program.  So, we handed the reins over to her and had a very successful program!

26 kids came out for the program, which worked out perfectly with the four stations that our senior created.  We had a trivia station with a PowerPoint presentation of questions and answers spanning across the whole series, we also had a book discussion station where the kids discussed the most recent book, then we had a game where they were each assigned a Diary of a Wimpy Kid character on their back and had to ask questions to figure out who they were and finally, a craft station where the kids decorated their own cheese touch!  (The cheese touch was a slice of cheese picture printed on cardstock which the kids decorated with glitter glue, pompoms, beads, and all other leftover craft material).  Then of course we also had a snack which was – cheese crackers!

The program was awesome!  The kids had a great time and the best part was that they number of kids broke down into great groups – a group of fifth graders, a group of fourth graders, a group of third grade boys and a group of third grade girls.  They liked being with their friends and sharing their knowledge about the series.  I was asking the kids what we should do next and a lot them are now reading the Big Nate series and a couple of kids suggested the My Weird School series by Dan Gutman.  Our senior high student was so funny, after the program she looked at me and said, “I never understood why you said you were tired after events, but now I get it!”  She was very happy with the results of the program, took plenty of photographs for her presentation at school, and is now working on some more research about the importance of literacy for children.