I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I have never read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz! Not ever. Not as a child, nor as an adult with young children. Yet, it is such a great book, easy to read and a hundred times better than the film. And we loved the film!
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Book
I bought the Oxford Children’s Classic version because of its appealing cover, and I’m so pleased I did. It is unabridged, with decent sized text. And it contains many extras in the back which help encourage engagement with the text:
The extras include ‘Weird and Wonderful Words’, a vocab section of unusual words and their means and sentences in which they are used. In addition to a lovely brick road road detailing the life of author, L. Frank Baum there is a page about the illustrator, Sam Hadley.
It took me five days to read this book, reading five chapters per day. I read them in the morning, and whilst some are quite long, the girls never complained. It was a lovely, relaxing start to our day.
The Wizard of Oz Film and Snacks
On the Saturday, I planned to have family film night, watching the Wonderful Wizard of Oz and creating lots of fun snacks. Here, Charlotte completely got involved with the shopping and the making of all the snacks. As a result, I was freed up to artify the whole experience 😊
Using some wonderful free art, I decorated everything in sight! From the bottles:
To the cup cakes:
Lastly, I made some ‘Over the Rainbow’ fruit kebobs:
Of course, we chose the 1939 version of the film because, y’know, it is really really good:
A great family night!
This week we are reading The Wind in the Willows.
I have seen the movie (almost yearly growing up!), I was Auntie Em in our school production, and yet I have never read the book… sad to say I didn’t even know there was a book!
Yes, homeschooling educates us as well as our children!
Would love to have you extend your learning about L. Frank Baum and the Wizard of Oz. https://tracingthepath.libsyn.com/the-wizard-of-oz-tradition
Thank you, I shall check it out and perhaps leave a link in my blog?
It’s actually a complete series, there’s like 15 books in the series, several of which don’t even have Dorothy as a character. They’re all quite fun.