This spring I decided to try a family book club for homeschoolers. Fortunately there are excellent themes, book selections, and discussion questions at Growing Book by Book. I’m using the 2018 list, which focuses on character strengths. This list includes a dinner menu, suggested activities, and further reading for each monthly theme so you can easily extend the conversation at home.
The theme for this month was teamwork, and we opened with the quote pictured above (also provided in Growing Book by Book’s materials–seriously, they are so, so good.)
We opened up with the quote and talked about what a team is. We watched part of this video about Henry Ford and the assembly line. (I would suggest starting around the 1:00 mark to avoid images of a meat packing plant.) We decided that, even though we often think about sports when we talk about teams, you don’t have to be playing a sport to be on a team.
Book 1: Officer Buckle and Gloria, by Peggy Rathman. We looked at the cover of this book and decided that it was definitely not about a sports team. After reading, we discussed how different members of a team can do different jobs, and that’s what makes a team so effective. Officer Buckle was really good at coming up with and talking about safety tips, and Gloria was good at making the presentation exciting for the kids to listen to.
Book 2: The Enormous Turnip, by Cristiana Cerretti. This is a folktale, I believe, so there are many different editions–this is just the one I used. I love this one because it emphasizes that all members of a team are important–even a little mouse–and the team is stronger together than the individuals are separately.
Activity: Escape room. We didn’t end up doing this activity because I only had two kids, one of whom was preschool-age. Breakoutedu.com has some great free escape room plans that are ready to use as long as you have a kit or kit components (mine are pictured below and were purchased individually from Amazon). I used one under the “team building” category called “Birthday Breakout: Flynn the Fox”. (I can’t link it here because you have to sign up for a free account, but once you do that you should be able to locate it with the search function.) I think escape rooms are great for encouraging teamwork and critical thinking in a fun way. It always amazes me to watch how teams function within an escape room–some team members are really observant, some have great instincts, some are awesome at puzzles, and others are great at staying calm and organized.
I’m really looking forward to next week’s theme: Persistence!
LibrErin 