The Knight at Dawn

At the first book club meeting, all of the children showed up at different times, so for the second meeting, I decided to have a warm-up on the table for the kids to do as they arrived. I found a knight maze and two word searches online, which the children really enjoyed.  You can find them at http://www.printactivities.com/Mazes/Shape_Mazes/Castle-Maze.gif, http://www.armoredpenguin.com/wordsearch/Data/2011.06/3021/30210442.085.html, and http://busybeekidsprintables.s3.amazonaws.com/medieval/wordsearch/KnightWordSearch_Easy.pdf.

Then, I summarized the second book, The Knight at Dawn, and asked the children a variety of questions about the book.

Once again, when we arrived at the part in the book where the tree house spun and took Jack and Annie to the castle, each child received a Dizzy Pill (which is actually a tootsie roll) to help make them less dizzy. After eating their Dizzy Pills, the children were instructed to spin around three times, as if they were in the spinning tree house.

In addition, when we got to the part in the book where Jack wrote in his notebook, I showed the kids the notebook I made that has all of Jack's notes in it.

The first activity the children got to do was build their own castles out of Dixie cups. I was amazed by everyone's creativity - two brothers even crushed the cups to make a moat for their castle!

When we got to the part where Jack and Annie were being chased by crocodiles in the castle moat, we played a game called Duck Duck Crocodile, which is played similarly to Duck Duck Goose. I even brought in a crocodile stuffed animal to play the game with.

At the very end, we decorated pictures of knights that look like stained glass when you place them on your window (I found them at the Excalibur Hotel in Las Vegas). The children also used stick-on foam pieces and crayons to decorate picture frames  to put their stained glass picture in. I made the picture frames out of popsicle sticks beforehand.