Tuesday 12 March 2019

Project 75: Charles Dickens & World Book Day

As Thursday 7th March was World Book Day, we decided to have a project on Charles Dickens (see also Project 24: World Book Day and the Wizard of Oz). 

We read three Dickens stories over the week from the (highly recommended) Usborne Complete Dickens: Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby. 

The Usborne Complete Dickens
Each story is abridged to about 40 pages, starting with a colourful illustrated guide to the main characters of the stories. It's very accessible for those not yet ready for the full unabridged versions, and the work of Dickens is filled with memorable characters.

On World Book Day itself we visited the Dickens Museum in London. This is the house where Dickens wrote his first books, and is set up in period style. 
Charles Dickens Museum
Our children enjoy any museum, and they enjoyed exploring the different types of room and objects of the Victorian age. It's not a particularly child-friendly museum however, and it would benefit from the sort of children's activity trail that other museums often have - If there was such a trail/worksheet, we weren't informed about it. 

We also did a number of more general activities around books. We watched the BBC World Book Day Live Lesson, did a Book Bingo activity sheet, and got them to fill in a simple book review worksheet about one of their favourite books. 

Book Bingo includes questions about whether you've read a book meeting a certain criteria, which initiated a lot of discussion and debate - especially when Monica and Solomon couldn't agree on whether or not King Arthur was set in a castle!

For their book reviews Monica picked Mary Poppins and Solomon picked William Again (the latest book that we are reading in the Just William series).

Book reviews for World Book Day
Next week's project: More Maps!

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