Last Monday we had our Old School Monday "book binding" party, where you and your kids could assemble their poems onto the book pages and be done. Judging by the number of families who showed up, I am guessing this has been a very full season for most of you, as it has been for us, and either you decided not to participate in the group book project or you ran out of time to get your family's pages done before the party. Either way, it's ok. If you have not finished (or started!) your pages for our group book this year, but wish you had, you still have time. Yes, it is down to the wire--the Author's Fair is this upcoming Saturday, May 4--but the pages are easy to do and I'll show you here how you can finish and still have them in our book at the fair, if you still wanted to participate.
In the last post, I gave you the details for formatting and printing your riddle--but I am amending instructions because I found our poems looked best with approx. 20 point font boldface. So that's a slightly larger font size than I said before. If you use the smaller font size, no big deal. But if you see this before you print out, great.
Also, minor detail that does not affect your work but which I wanted you to know: my girls and I decided to change the title of the book. We found in our riddle generating that while our riddles were celebrating the natural world, they were ending up all being very broad and not quite meeting the idea behind the title "Our Big Backyard." So we are changing the title of the book to "What Is It? A Book of Nature Riddles." So as long as your child's riddle is about something in nature, it will work perfectly.
If you still want your kids to participate in the book project:
--Bring your child's riddle printed out and the riddle answer printed out on a separate page to the Ocean Grove table at the Author's fair no later than 10:00 a.m.
(If you have multiple children making riddles, their answers can go on the same page, with plenty of spacing in between--you will be cutting them out, as you will see below.)
--Bring glue sticks. You can assemble your child's page there at the fair and add it to our book. I will have all the other supplies you will need to finish your page. Please do not bring regular glue--it will not dry in time. Tape might also work.
--In the past we have met at the Ocean Grove table and then given the kids a chance to present their book all together at the Author's Chair. If we do so this year, we will be meeting at 10:40 a.m., with the goal of presenting the book at 11:00. Those of you who want your kids to present the book at the Author's Chair, please RSVP to this post by leaving a comment. If no one is interested, I'd like to know so I don't hang around the mall unnecessarily. : ) If no one RSVP's, we will just pass on that this year.
Questions or comments otherwise? Please leave them in the comments too, so everyone may benefit from the answers.
Finally, here are my girls' pages, as examples of what the final pages will look like (click on the images to see them bigger):
The front side of each child's page will have the riddle, bordered with colored construction paper. Notice the poem is offset to the right, to allow for the holes we will add to complete the "binding."
The back side of each child's page will have the answer and illustration.
So as you read the book, each riddle's answer is revealed as you turn the page.
My girls had fun with these! They used the online "riddle generator" interactive I linked earlier just as a brainstorming tool, and then came up with their own riddle styles. You own child's riddle can be as elaborate or simple as you and he/she wants.
Special thanks to Kathy Oak and Lucy Hiatt, who generously donated some of their Ocean Grove funds to help purchase the papers needed for the Old School book projects last year and this year. Thank you ladies so much!
