First Meeting

Well, the book club is finally underway!  After a entire year of planning and seeking interested members and finding a time to meet, I feel great!  We had our first meeting Saturday, April 2, 2011.  I even handed out invitations.  I think it was a success.  I think we all enjoyed each other and the activities planned.  There were four other members besides me.  One person stood us up which I am not pleased at all about.  When the members first arrived, they had to sign in and choose a color.  They received a folder of information, a supply box and a nametag all in that same color.  They had to choose a nickname for themselves.  It could have been a word that describes how they read or a word that describes the genre they like to read.  Or it could even have been a favorite character in a book or maybe even a title of their favorite book.  In this book club, I have two pairs of friends that I know from different stages of my life.  One pair consists of friends from high school and the other pair consists of my college friend and her sister.  So, we started out introducing ourselves and how they all knew me and then stated our nickname and what it means.  For this book club blog, I thought it would be wise to change the names of the members to protect their identities.  So the nicknames work out perfectly!  I chose the name Turtle because I am a very slow reader (and I also like turtles!).  Going along with that idea, another member chose the name Rabbit because she reads fast.  Another member chose Sookie (a character in a vampire series).  Another member chose the nickname Dead to the World because that was her favorite book in the same vampire series.  Then the other member chose Romantix because she likes reading romance novels (and I think she also likes shopping at that store!)  Just kidding Romantix!   The game that was planned for this party went along with the names we chose.  In our supply boxes, we received 40 pieces of the new Fizzl’d Fruits Skittles.  (Sorry, Mars Snackfood US Company, but four out of the five members did not care for them at all.  Only Dead to the World liked them.*)  Throughout the party we were supposed to call each other by our new nicknames.  When we didn’t abide by this rule we lost a Skittle to the person who caught us.  I was terrible at this and was caught a lot!  We were also advised not to eat them if we wanted to win.  But Rabbit kept munching on them during the meeting.  Dead to the World ended up with the most Skittles and won the game.  Congratulations Dead to the World!  She picked out the tallest prize out of 7 wrapped prizes.  It was a stack of food storage containers.  (For this book, the prizes are kitchen themed.) 

Also in the supply box was an index card with a question on it.  We responded on the card, with the colored pen that was also in the supply box, then put it in the Sharing Jar.  Rabbit drew the cards out and each person shared their answers.  The question was, “What are some of your favorite childhood books (or authors)?”  Some of the responses were Amelia Bedelia; Ramona & Beezus and other Beverly Cleary books; Mrs. Piggle Wiggle; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and SuperFudge and Blubber and other Judy Blume books; The Cat in the Hat; Where The Wild Things Are; books about dogs; the Encyclopedia; National Geographic; Blaze books; Watchers by Dean Koontz; Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry; Summer Pony and Winter Pony; Flip; Pretzel; Sweet Valley High books; Mercer Mayer books; The Very Hungry Caterpillar; The Giving Tree and The Monster at the End of This Book starring Grover (Sesame Street).  We then filled out a sheet asking for our contact information.  I will type this up in a chart and hand it out at the next meeting.  I also had them sign two permission statements allowing me share their contact information with others in the group and to post pictures of them on this blog.  For lunch, I made Zuppa Toscana soup (similar to the one at Olive Garden).  Everyone thought it was great. (At least that is what they told me!)  We also made our own chicken paninis on the George Foreman grill.  Cut up pieces of cooked chicken breast, crumbled bacon, tomatoes, onions, lots of shredded cheddar cheese and Thousand Island dressing were the toppings available to choose from.  These were a hit!  Romantix and Rabbit said that they were going to buy a George Foreman grill to make paninis plus a variety of other foods.  I should get commission points from George Foreman for good advertising! 

After eating, we got down to business.  We tried to think of a name for our book club.  We brainstormed several names such as Blumers since we all liked Judy Blume books when we were younger.  Also, Pickle Dips was also suggested since Romantix brought this pickle/corned beef/cream cheese dip.  Thank you again Romantix for bringing this!  It is really addicting!  Others that were suggested were Bookends, Bookworms, Higher Learning, Drunken Monkeys and the Fabulous Five.  We said that we would come back to this discussion with more ideas but unfortunately we forgot.  So, our book club doesn’t have an official name yet!  We also came up with a mission statement.  I will post the mission statement at the beginning of the blog along with the book club name once we come up with a name.  We also listed some rules for the book club.  We didn’t have too many rules – just to respect each others’ opinion and to be prepared by reading the sections and completing the HW sheets.  In our folders was a schedule for the Regular Meetings.  After discussing this, we talked about the schedule of today’s preview party and the review party at the end.  We read some information about the author.  We also read summaries and reviews of this book.  Also included in the folders were the copies of the first section of the book that is to be read before we meet again.  We also discussed the homework sheet that we are supposed to fill out as we are reading.  Also explained were the reading markers we are could use to highlight sections or sentences while we are reading.  These are stickers with symbols on them (?,  ! ,  ",  J,  L).  We also discussed what we are supposed to bring next time for Show and Tell.  We are supposed to bring information on some historical aspect that was mentioned in the reading.  It should be something that we find interesting but don’t know too much about.  I am going to find information on scientific eating.  That reminds me, I should do that now so I don’t forget later!  We also decided the date of our next meeting.  It is in a month on Sookie’s birthday so it will also be a birthday party for her!  We wrote it on the book club calendar sheet.  All the members said that a month would be plenty of time to finish the reading.  But it might not be enough time for me to read the section again and prepare!  Rabbit or Sookie suggested that we each bring an appetizer for the next meeting.  I viewed this as a nice gesture to release me from the responsibility of providing all the food.  I truly appreciate this. 

Since this was a preview party, we couldn’t discuss any reading.   So we had a KWL activity.  This technique is used in teaching and stands for Know Want Learn.  We did the KW of KWL.  To do the K, we each came up to the easel sketch pad and wrote down something that we already knew about Julia Child.  I was surprised at how long of a list we came up with.  I thought that most of us wouldn’t know anything about her except that she had a cooking show on IPTV.  Sookie shared that she just saw Julia Child’s kitchen when she was in DC a week ago.  Next, we brainstormed the W – what we want to learn about Julia Child.  We then had a craft.  Most of the crafts for this book will be cooking.  I took the recipe from the first reading of the book.  It was a recipe for buttermilk biscuits.  It was actually Julia's mother's recipe.  I split the recipe into 18 steps,  then alternately assigned each member 3 steps.  So, in essence,  we took turns making the biscuits.  I didn’t tell them what the recipe was for but they guessed it pretty quickly.  Rabbit had to do six steps (well, she volunteered to do it - so thank you Rabbit) because of our missing person.   The recipe called for fresh parsley and chives.  I have never worked with these before and it was a pain to chop them up.  The biscuits turned out good but were kind of dry so someone suggested honey.  Much better!   But the herbs could not be tasted at all.  We were worried while we were making the biscuits that 4 tsp of baking powder seemed like quite a lot but it worked!    We all had fun doing this especially since Dead to the World did an awesome impression of Julia Child’s voice while each of us was cooking!   Thank you book club members for doing a great job with this activity!  Before we ended the day, each member had to fill out a Learning/Enthusiasm Matrix.  This is another tool used in teaching.  It is used to evaluate the instruction rather than the students' performance.  It measures how much they learned and how much they had fun.  When I reviewed the ones from this meeting, I concluded that we learned quite a bit and loved it! 
*See correction in a later post.