3-5 Year Old,  6-8 Year Old,  Book Clubs,  Book Focus,  English,  History/Social Science,  Interest Led Homeschool,  Kids' Book Club,  Preschool,  Social Activities,  Teaching, the Give Way

Kids’ Book Club: Up the Rhine to Switzerland!

Book for this month’s kids’ book club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland (This link is for the kindle or hardback version.  DO NOT buy the paper book!  I did and immediately returned it.  It was terrible!  No pictures, tiny print.  I ended up just printing a pdf of this Google ebook.)

This book is a sequel to this reading primer.  I don’t know if I’d actually read it again.  My daughter loved it, but it was really basic.  So, not really a classic.  Just old. 🙂 But, it’s great as a secondary reader.  And, it’s a great informative story.

We had a Swiss book club get together, so a mix of a few things from The Overall Boys and other things related to just Switzerland.  This one had somewhere between 30 and 50 parents and kids, so there were A LOT of activities.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

I found a super cute printout for making their own little knapsacks.  you can’t see the back, but there are two “straps.”

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

My husband drew mountain ranges around our whole backyard.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

Arrows and apples for the William Tell story.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

Make a snowman!  This is a super cute activity.  A sock filled with rice makes a cute little snowman.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

A “snowball fight” — these actually worked really well.  I happened to have a roll of saran wrap that a friend gave me, so I wasn’t too worried about using it all.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

We had a soap carving station.  Ivory soap is the best to use.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

I set up a soccer station.  Nothing more Swiss than soccer…well, chocolate maybe and watches. 🙂

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

I thought this was a cool activity.  I happened to have some old Swiss calendars for them to make them into mountains.  Some kids did their own thing and made them into horns. 🙂 Then they just cut off the bottom, flipped it over and made a mini mountain to make the snow cap.  (If you are like me and have a really hard  time figuring out how to make these, watch this. 🙂  I didn’t cut them into triangles, just held the one end and rolled the paper.
Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

One of the activities was to decorate a walking stick.  We took a few hikes the weeks before and gathered a bunch of sticks.  I gave them tape and ribbons.  They went to town and loved it!! There were a couple kids who played with them all week. 🙂

Once they finished their hiking sticks, they went on a hike.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

Halfway there, I had some goat milk in a cooler to try and some chocolate.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

The hike led them to my parents house around the corner.  My dad is Swiss, so I asked for their help.  And boy did they come through!!

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

My dad made his delicious rosti — three types!  You can see they had the backyard set up.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

My dad set up his Swiss map as well for all the kid to look at.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

I got some real Ovomaltine.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

And set up a little breakfast table with Ovomaltine (milk and almond milk options), and some sopf.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland
Making their own cow bell — I left it up to them how to make theirs.  Their cow bell could also become a wind chime when they got home. I got these bells.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

Some fun things to play with.

Kid's Book Club: The Overall Boys in Switzerland

There are a few more stations that I didn’t get photos for.  You can find the descriptions in the directions pdf.

There were a few questionable  parts in the story.  Here’s the email I sent out to the parents as soon as I realized others might want to skip these parts like we did. Overall Boys Head’s Up

Swiss German words

The Overall Boys Quotes

Supplies for each station

Directions for Stations

For my inspiration, more ideas and resources for a more in depth look at the book, see my Book Theme: Overall Boys in Switzerland and Country Study: Switzerland Pinterest Boards.

Kids’ Book Club: Berry Picking with Milly Molly Mandy

Kids’ Book Club: All Aboard with The Boxcar Children

Kids’ Classics Book Club

Save

Save

Save

Save

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *