I’m not sure if it’s all the back to school blog posts I have been reading, or the fact that I have been debating whether or not to start teaching my oldest daughter to read yet. It could just be the fact that I’ve been reading a lot more for myself recently. Maybe it was a combination of all of those things. Whatever it was, I woke up at 3:00 this morning thinking about book reports.
I remember having to do book reports in school. Sometimes they were written reports, and sometimes they were oral reports. But my favorite was always when I got to do a project. I loved trying to think of something creative that hadn’t been done before. I also loved that my mom would help me actually put it together and figure out how to make it work.
Here are some creative ideas you can use to help your child with their next book report.
Dioramas
Yes, they probably get done a lot, for all different subjects. With just a little bit of extra effort you can make a diorama creative and fun. By using fishing line or a really thin thread you can attach birds or other things to the top of the diorama, letting them hang down and “fly” in your scene. If your diorama is open at the top string the thread from one side to the other instead. You can also follow the lead of interactive books and create pull tabs or wheels to make things in the diorama move.
Book Covers
Book covers are really simple to make. What makes them fun and interesting is what you put on them. Have your child come up with a new title for the book and put it on their cover, and then they can explain why they would have used that title instead. Or, they can create a special cover that illustrates their favorite scene from the book. I remember reading Ramona Quimby age 8 when I was in 3rd grade. In the book she had to do a book report, but since she hadn’t actually read a book she made up a story based on a cat food commercial she had seen. For my book report I made a book cover for the book she made up and gave the book report that she did in the book. Then I shared how I had actually read Ramona Quimby age 8 and what happened after she gave that book report. If you want to know what happened, you will have to read the book yourself.
Picture Books
When I got a little bit older I remember it being popular to have the other students in the class do your project for you. Usually a the student giving the report would share the story, make a list of things from the book that you could draw, collect all the drawings, and then choose a winner and give them a prize of a candy bar or pencil or something like that. Personally, I think that the student giving the report should have to do the project, but the idea did inspire another idea for me. Simply draw one or two illustrations for each chapter, write a short summary of what happens in that chapter, and voila, you have a picture book based on the book you just read. Remind your child to draw the picture at the end of reading each chapter and the project will be done as soon as they finish the book.
Imitation
Whatever they do in the book, you can do it for your project. You can either create a model of something they do, or you can recreate the actual project. My favorite book report project of all time was for the book How to Eat Fried Worms. My mom actually came up with the idea. Why not fix worms in each of the 15 ways that the main character had to eat worms in the book? We used gummy worms instead of real worms, but it was a lot of fun. We figured out that gummy worms melt when they are deep fried (we ended up using sucker sticks instead for the fried ones), used the tv commercial trick of replacing ice cream with mashed potatoes, and the rest we were able to recreate pretty closely. My teacher wanted me to display the project in the library, but it went moldy over the weekend so it didn’t make it back to school. My mom did take pictures of it though.
There are so many more creative and clever ideas you can use out there. What are some of the favorite book reports you have seen or done? Leave me a comment and let me know.
Jennifer Lavender is a homeschooling mom of 2 girls and an independent consultant for Usborne Books at Home. To find out more you can visit her blog, Jennifer Lavender?And Then Some or sign up for her Usborne Newsletter.
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