Book Club - Jake Drake

I'm a few months behind on posting book club news - summer and the lead up to summer is so crazy. For the July book club (which was today), the Little Dippers read a perfect back to school book in which a young boy learns a little about teachers and a little about being funny. School starts in about three weeks here so that was a lot of the focus of our discussions. Please note some of the teacher discussions don't work as well with homeschool students.

Book: Jake Drake, Class Clown by Andrew Clements

Introduce Yourself: Tell us your name, age, and what school you'll be in this fall.

Discussion Questions

1. Are you ready to go back to school? Ready for a new teacher?
   
2. What do you hope your new teacher will be like?
   
3. What was Miss Bruce not supposed to do before Christmas? [smile] Why do you think Miss Bruce was told not to smile at the class?
   
4. Do you think that a teacher should smile at a class?
   
5. Is it better for a teacher to be friends with her class or to be in charge? Can they do both? What happens if they do too much of one?
   
6. Who was the best teacher you've ever had? Why? What made them a good teacher?
   
7. Who was the worst teacher you've ever had? Why? What made them a bad teacher?
   
8. Is it good to be the class clown? Why or why not?
   
9. Is it easy to be funny? Hard?
   
10. Why does Jake stop being funny all the time?
    

Activities
Tell Me A Joke
Everyone tell me your favorite joke! (Note 1st graders tend to lack comic timing.)

Make the teacher laugh
I sat in a chair and the children took turns trying to make me laugh. I had a kitchen timer set to 15 seconds (started with 10 seconds, but it wasn't long enough). They got a prize out of the treasure chest (filled with trinkets) if they made me smile or laugh. They didn't succeed until the end when I let them all try at the same time.

Joke Tellers
I pulled a ton of joke books from the library and we looked through them and had a ton of fun picking out our favorites. We then made together step-by-step some origami fortune tellers which I renamed into joke tellers. (Thank heavens I mastered these in elementary school.)
Here are simple instructions
We put the joke question on the part with the numbers (inside the "face" of the teller) and the answers under the flap you lift up (where the fortune usually goes). We moved our fingers back and forth showing the different choices until the other person said stop. It was a lot of fun. And of course the joke books were available for check out.

All in all fun was had.