Friday 24 October 2014

Superheroes, comic books and cartoons

The latest Chatterbooks Activity Pack is all about superheroes, comic books and cartoons.  As well as reading suggestions, there are activities such as making your own comic books and becoming a superhero.  Check it out here:

http://readingagency.org.uk/children/Comics%20activity%20pack.pdf

Thursday 23 October 2014

Fortunately, the Milk...

At Addlestone Library's Chatterbooks in October we discussed Fortunately, the Milk... by Neil Gaiman. This is a review by Maya, one of our 11 year old members, which sums up the general feeling of the book in our group:

"Personally, I didn't find this book that challenging, so I would aim this book for year 4 children (ages 8-9). Even though some parts in this book were humorous, the rest I found a bit childish.

If I had to choose who would be my favourite character it would probably be Tvilight Tina because she is suspicious. My least favourite character is Splod the God, I just find him creepy.

A few changes could make this book more interesting for me, like less pictures and more exciting vocabulary.

Finally, I would give this book 5 out of 10 stars."

Our activity for the month was making milk cartons out of card and then illustrating them in the way that they would illustrate the book. If you would also like to do this you can find the template here, along with lots of other Fortunately, the milk related activities: http://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/fortunately-the-milk-activity-pack-web.pdf

In Fortunately, the Milk the character Professor Steg uses descriptive names for objects. So for example she calls a coconut a 'hard-hairy-wet-white-cruncher'. Because of this I challenged the members of our group to come up with alternative names for every day items which the rest of the group had to guess what it was. Here are the names they came up with:

A tongue, tingly squashed thing in a glass

A chewy mouth thing

A yellow round thing

Big-wobbly-go-on-head-thing

Big metal box on wheels with a window

gardening object that squirts water

hot blowy air dry hair machine

slithering-scaly-slimy-thing

wordy picture page turner

Can you guess what any of them are?! Put your answers in the comment box!


Watch this space for the next instalment of Addlestone Chatterbooks Adventures on Awful Auntie by David Walliams...


Tuesday 21 October 2014

Review of Fizzlebert Stump

Review of Fizzlebert Stump.
We thought the book had many good characters, had a good storyline, descriptive settings and imaginative ideas; such as false teeth for a lion.
However the title gave away the story sligthly and there could have been a few more illustrations.
Review by HS & DA.

Overal group rating:
2 Thumbs Up.
7 Thumbs Okay.
2 Thumbs Down.









 
 
In the session we designed and decorated clown faces.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
We are currently reading Monkey and Me by David Gilman.
Our next session is on 11th November 2014 at 4.30pm. 
 

Friday 10 October 2014

Guildford Chatterbooks - How To Make Easy Envelope Bookmarks

Hello everyone!

We're Guildford Library Chatterbooks. We've been running for about 18 months and currently have a group of ten year old boys and girls. Places are unfortunately limited but you're always welcome to enquire either by calling 0300 200 1001 or sending an email to guildford.library@surreycc.gov.uk and asking for Jessica or Susan T. who run the group.

We meet on a Saturday morning once a month to discuss our set book and do a craft activity or creative writing task.

For our first post we thought we'd share one of our favourite craft activities from last year:
 
Easy Envelope Bookmarks

As the name suggests they're very easy, quick, cheap and fun to make.

You'll need:
  • Different coloured envelopes
  • Glue
  • Coloured foam sheets/pieces
  • Pens
  • Mini fluffy pom-poms
  • Googly eyes
  1. Get the children to cut the corners off the envelope large enough to fit over the outer edge of a book page.
  2. Decorate and allow to dry. Simple!

Here are some our group made:




Caterham Chatterbooks #1

Caterham Chatterbooks meets roughly every 4 weeks on a Saturday from 3pm-4pm.

We have just restarted again after the summer so at our meeting on October 4th, we didn't discuss a specific book but instead talked about the Chatterbooks Week theme - books that make you happy! The Caterham Chatterbooks leader (Rebecca) has arranged a display of childrens books along this theme.



To celebrate, we drew pictures of some of our favourite book characters to decorate the display - Mr Men and Little Miss characters were our most popular choice!


We each took home a book from the Helen Moss 'Adventure Island' series, which we will be discussing at our November meeting.

Egham Chatterbooks

Hi,

We are a group of 12 who meet on a Tuesday once a month at 4.30p.m for a lively discussion about books. We play games, make crafts, do quizzes and book related activities. We are currently reading Fizzlebert Stump: The Boy Who Ran Away From The Circus (and joined the library) by A.F.Harrold.
 

Thursday 9 October 2014

Addlestone Chatterbooks - Mythical Beasts!

We meet every four weeks on a Friday at 3.45pm for an hour. At our last meeting we designed our very own mythical creatures as a celebration of the end of the Summer Reading Challenge 'The Mythical Maze'!


We also did a quiz where the children had to guess the book from just one word clues. Our winner was Billy who won an activity pack including a puzzle book, pen, pencil and bookmark.

Our next meeting is on Friday 17th October so watch this space for what we get up to next!

Wednesday 8 October 2014

Chatterbooks Chatterday


Every summer, all of our Chatterbooks Groups get together for our annual Chatterbooks Chatterday.
Children, parents and group leaders enjoy a celebration with food, a visiting author and the fiercely-contested Chatterbooks Quiz.

This year’s special guests were the fantastic 2 Steves (Steve Barlow and Steve Skidmore), who kept everyone  entertained with lots of hilarious audience participation.

 
The Quiz was won by a joint team from Egham and Camberley Chatterbooks groups, who keep the splendid Chatterday trophy for the next year.

As one Chatterbooks member said, the day was “literally awesome mega epic-ness!”