Narnia Book Club in Homeschool

This week, we finished one of the winter selections for Treehouse School House’s fabulous book club kits. It was an old classic–The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, #2 in the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis.

This was actually the first chapter book I ever read aloud to my oldest. I remember pausing a lot to explain things to him, because he was young at the time–but soaked everything up like a sponge. Like thousands of others across the globe, I am a huge fan of C.S. Lewis, especially the Narnia series. When I was in high school, dreaming of my future family, I always thought it would be cool to have my (hopefully four) kids in “Narnia order:” Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl.

Guess what. I did. 🙂

Homeschool Book Club: Narnia Edition

Alright, on to Homeschool Book Club! We have been loving these kits by Treehouse Schoolhouse. She is one of my favorite homeschool resource blogs, and content creators. She has an incredible preschool curriculum that I reviewed here–there is a free sample you can download, for the storybook Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey.

Last month, we read My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Garnett, and I explained the activities we did to accompany our Book Club meeting, in this post. Planning Book Club is really fun–and so is attending! There are four families in our club: four moms, and 15 kids!

For this Narnia Book Study, we completed a lot of the designated activities in the weeks preceding our book club meeting.

What We Tried

• Made our own Turkish Delight
• Ate honey toast and boiled eggs, like Mr. Tumnus (we skipped the sardines ;))
• Watched some cool YouTube videos about beavers, Turkish delight, and children being sent to the country during WWII air raids {like the Pevensies were!}
• Made fantasy rice maps- this was a new one for me! I had never heard of these, and it was definitely my favorite activity of the entire Book Club Kit.

Fantasy Rice Maps

Is that not the coolest thing ever?! We took watercolor paper, a Dixie cup of rice, and some cold brewed coffee. The kids dumped their rice onto their paper, then pushed it around in various ways with their fingers. The goal was to create little “land masses” on portions of the paper, with channels or bays or bigger bodies of water in between. Then once they were happy with their landforms, they took a Sharpie pen and traced around the areas. They created very realistic-looking countries, with peninsulas and archipelagos, just like on a real map!

Once they traced these areas, they funneled their rice back into the cup. Our next step was watercolor. We used cold coffee (kind of fun!) to color in the land. Once that dried, we used blue watercolor for the surrounding bodies of water. Finally, once everything dried again, the kids went in and created their compass rose, and different symbols on their map. I loved seeing their creativity! They made mountain ranges, forests, cities, castles, and other exciting things as they created their fantasy world. My daughter even drew a sea monster near one of the shores!

A glowing recommendation

If you have been looking to start a homeschool book club with friends, OR just want to engage with high-quality chapter books in your homeschool, I highly recommend the Treehouse Schoolhouse Book Club Kits. You can buy them for individual titles, or in sets. It has been such an enriching experience for my kids–from thoughtful discussion questions, to inspiring projects, to fascinating YouTube videos (that we stream ad-free through SafeShare–an awesome free service that you will probably hear me talk about a lot!)

I love hearing from other homeschool parents! Shoot me a message here if you’ve got a favorite book or homeschool book club idea to discuss!

Cait