Wacky Wednesday Book Discussion: Fortunately, the Milk
Yesterday, we had our final book discussion for our rising third and fourth grade students. The library has been really quiet this week, I think a lot of families are on vacation so I ended up with ten kids in my book discussion, nine of which had read the book! For this book discussion, I chose Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman – it’s an absolutely outrageous story of a dad’s adventure coming home from the corner store after picking up milk for his children’s breakfasts.
Most of the kids seemed to enjoy the story, sharing their favorite characters and parts in the story. We spent a long time discussing whether or not the dad’s story was true or if he just made it up. The kids used quotes from the book as well as the illustrations to make their point. Normally, it can be very difficult for me to get this age group to actually discuss a book – they’re great at answering questions, but haven’t quite figured out the discussion part yet. But, yesterday, they did really well.
After our discussion, we spent a few minutes answering some trivia questions, which the kids always love! And then we had just enough time to do an extension activity. For this age group, I keep the book discussion around 45 minutes and always include some sort of extension activity to keep the kids engaged. Yesterday, we created our own names for actual items similar to the way Professor Steg does in the book. Instead of calling it an hot air balloon, Professor Steg calls it “floaty-ball person-carrier.” So I gave the kids a list of words and told them to give them new names similar to the way Professor Steg does. They did a great job, using awesome vocabulary to describe the items. And we spent a few minutes sharing them with the group. Overall, we had a great time and I think the kids enjoyed it.
If you’re looking for activities, check out Bloomsbury’s packet of awesome extension activities ready to use! And check out Neil Gaiman’s website for his children’s books for more!