I read the Wind in the Willows book over two weeks. Whilst easily understandable for my 12 year old, my nine year old struggled to keep up. She snuggled by my side and looked at the wonderful illustrations. By the end of it, she was completely enthralled having got used to the long, complex sentences.
Reading Grahame’s Wind in the Willows inspired me to begin a Literary Devices Notebook with my girls. It was so rich in different language techniques, I thought the girls could learn a lot from his writing:
These are filling up nicely, and I am adding devices as I go along, depending on the book I am reading.
Wind in the Willow: Activities
The one activity I wanted to do with Wind in the Willows was a cross word to go in our special edition free magazine which will be inserted into our Edwardian Times Newspaper. But then I learnt that the first crossword puzzle came into existence in 1913, a few years after the time period I am covering this term. I had bought some air dry foam clay for a Beatrix Potter project, so the girls used that to recreate a map of the Wind in the Willows setting:
The clay was a new to us medium. It was a softer version of Fimo and it dried soft, like foam. The girls loved using it and I think it was significantly less messy to use than any other clay
With it, the girls were able to create a 3D effect, as well as easily mixing two colour to make a new one.
We will incorporate a photo of the map into our Edwardian Newspaper somehow, although I haven’t figured a natural way of doing so yet 😊
We spent an evening together as a family watching the Wind in the Willows film. I had planned to go all out and make ‘Toad in the Hall’ main meal (sausages in batter) and bubble and squeak on the side, but we were all getting over a nasty cold and I really didn’t have the energy for that 😒
For some nifty notebooking ideas to go along with the book see here
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Their map turned out great!