This week, I’m going to be leading the entire 4th grade through a game of Quidditch at recess.  Parents donated their brooms, the gym teacher donated the hoops and substitute-Quaffle, and the principal has crossed her fingers that no one gets a concussion.  Play ball!

The Quidditch game is part of the book club I’ve been running during lunch time for the last 4 years at the school, though we decided to include the entire 4th grade for this game because why shouldn’t everyone spend an afternoon running around with a broom?

We are, obviously, reading Harry Potter this year.

After I wrote that post, someone wrote me to ask how to set up a book club in their child’s school, so I thought I’d put everything down here just in case anyone else wants the information.

You can probably figure out the first steps: check with the principal if he/she is willing to give you a space in the school during lunch, check to see how many kids are interested, and finally send out an email (or send home a flyer) to all the parents in the class to ask them to sign up.  We capped the club at 12 when they were younger, but now, in 4th grader, we’re at 16 kids.  We meet once a week, during lunch.  When it’s indoor recess, we sometimes keep the meeting going through recess, too.  I set up a listserv for parents so I could send out information.

Okay, so now that the book club is established, how do you actually run it?

We are always reading two books at the same time.  One person is chosen each month to be the host.  They choose which book we’re going to read at home, and I ask them to choose a book that can be borrowed from the library and that keeps in mind the lowest reading level for their grade so it is inclusive to everyone.  The kids have about a month to read the book.

On the day of the discussion, the host sits in the front of the room and kicks off the talk by asking everyone what they thought of the book.  Everyone must participate in this part of the discussion, giving the book a thumbs up or a thumbs down (or a thumbs sideways) and why.  This ensures that everyone speaks at least once during the meeting.

Then the host tells the group why he/she chose the book.  And finally they ask four or five questions to the group.  I make a few backup questions for the host to use just in case.  I coach the kids through hosting so it’s a fairly low-stress situation, even for shy kids.

At the end of a hosted meeting, the next host is chosen and the next book is picked, and the kids have another month to read the next book at home.

So what do we do with the other three or four meetings each month, since we meet weekly?

I choose a theme for the year — one skill that we’re going to focus on — and then pick books to read aloud that teach that skill.  The theme for the first year of book club was pretty simple: who is the main character and what do you think of them?  So each book, we kept returning to figure out who was the main character and we looked at the text to decide how we felt about the character.  Younger kids = easier task.

Last year’s theme was “how do you know?”  We spent the whole year pulling out textual evidence to support arguments.  We also talked about the concept of “girl” books and “boy” books, and I refused to tell them the sex of the author for the books we read.  Over half guessed wrong when I did the reveal at the end of the book, and I got them to admit that while there were books that would appeal (or not appeal) to them as individuals, there was no such thing as a “girl” book or a “boy” book.

This year we’re doing a close reading of Harry Potter in order to look at the use of sensory devices within literature.  They’ve had chocolate frogs jump on their tongues, taken a Bertie Botts Every Flavour Bean challenge, made wands, learned how to duel, experienced a sorting, competed for house points, and now they will be playing Quidditch.  We always pause to look at sensory descriptions, especially trying to discern things like tone of voice through word choice or using smell to figure out whether the characters are in a welcoming or dangerous place.

I read the book aloud to them, pausing to ask questions or to break down the etymology of a word on the board.  That’s what we do for all the meetings that we don’t have a host discussion.

Oh, except for the ones where we run around playing Quidditch.

Let me know if you have questions, and I’ll throw the answer in the comment section below so everyone has it.

Just a reminder, get writing.  Tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.

I read a post a few weeks ago about the idea of closing the comment section on a blog in order to move the conversation to other social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.

He makes some excellent points about the comment section: “The system is built for individual comments, not for discussion threads … Commenting on something that’s more than a couple of days old guarantees that apart from the blog author only a handful of people will ever see the comment, and starting a discussion about a post that’s several months old is pretty much always a dead end.”

I guess what I like about the comment section is that if I find a post weeks later, I can still see the discussion because it’s dangling under the post.  And yes, there are plugins that enable you to run tweets under the blog post, but I assume the tweets disappear if the person removes the plugin or the commenter deletes their Twitter account.  It feels less… permanent.  Beyond that, 140 characters often isn’t enough space to respond to a post, though it is enough space to acknowledge a post.

Commenting has definitely dropped in recent years as more people read from mobile devices and more people blog.  I think when the blogging community was small, you felt obligated to comment and let the person know you read their words.  You also had fewer places to write your thoughts therefore you felt a deeper impulse to comment and use the commenting space.  Now, you can jump into conversations about a post in a wide range of spaces, which dilutes the use of each individual space though the commentary is probably at a similar level if one considers all the places someone may have aired their thoughts.

What do you think of closing down the comment section in order to funnel people toward social media for conversation?

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Draw Your Infertility” (Because I Can’t Have Babies)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I actually had “Draw Your Infertility” by Because I Can’t Have Babies bookmarked for this week because I didn’t read it until last weekend.  So I decided to put it in both places mostly because I think the exercise she did in the workshop is so helpful and applicable to a large range of emotionally-charged situations.  And yes, I am going to make you click over to see what she did in the workshop.  Believe me, you’ll want to bookmark the post, too, and return to it on a day you need it.

Persnickety Chickadee has a frank post about dealing with depression.  She also points out this fact about carrying your traditions and expectations with you: “Everyone’s expectations around home behaviours are different.  And because it’s something learned at home, where everyone else does it, it can be hard to explain it to someone else.”  This is why I read blogs and write a blog: because reading about someone else’s experience makes me feel less alone.

Unpregnant Chicken is struggling with the question many of us grapple with at some point in our treatment journey: reconciling her political beliefs about conception with her heart’s beliefs about conception.  It’s an interesting read.

Invincible Spring has a beautiful post about what a difference a year makes.  She writes, “During all those long years of loss, infertility and loneliness, I often comforted myself with the thought that life can change profoundly and unexpectedly in a single season, in the blink of an eye. ‘Everything could look completely different this time next year‘, I told myself, hoping it might be for the better.”  And isn’t that the hope that fuels us to put one foot in front of the other?

Two Adults, One Child kicks off her post with a venn diagram and then asks the eternal question: how does someone find their purpose?  It’s not just an interesting post that will encourage you to take a step back and look at your own life, but an interesting discussion is taking place in the comment section, too.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled has a moving post about the plot next to her daughter’s grave finally getting the plaque on it.  You should read this post precisely because it is a hard read.  Because hard reads are usually important reads because they force us to look at the truth about living and the time we have.

The roundup to the Roundup: What do you think about moving commenting to other platforms?  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between April 10th and 17th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I’ll admit that the discussion online regarding the parents whose children were taken into custody again because they were playing alone at a park has made me cranky.  Cranky enough to write this.  You may disagree, and I welcome thoughtful disagreement in the comment section.  Though you may also not wish to read this post.  And that’s okay, too.

I’ll start with a story.

There once was a student whose parents asked her to pack her own lunch.  It made sense; the child was 12 years old.

Every day, the girl brought an inadequate amount or type of food to school.  One day she brought a banana.  As in, her entire lunch was a single banana.  On another day, she brought a big bag of cookies and chips.

The child was hungry and would ask other kids for part of their lunch.  And then some of those kids wouldn’t have an adequate amount of food because they or their parents hadn’t packed enough food for both children.

So we talked to the child and asked her some basic nutrition questions: what are foods with protein?  What are some vegetables your parents have in the house that you can bring?  What do you know how to cook?

The child didn’t know.  She didn’t know which foods were a good source of protein.  She didn’t know how to make anything more than a bowl of cereal.  So we spoke to the parents and explained that while they may want her to pack her own lunch — a good independent act — they also needed to prepare her for the task.

The next day, the parents sent her to school again.

With the exact same, child-packed, non-nutritional lunch.

It was neglectful back when the parents were sending the child to school without helping their child meet her nutritional needs (and before you ask, yes, they had the financial means — that wasn’t part of the issue).  But I could give those parents the benefit of the doubt when we raised the issue.  Perhaps they didn’t know that this was a problem.

But once we notified them of the issue, when they continued to perpetuate the same problem, it came down to a much larger issue than the lunch itself.  At that point, they chose to set their child up over and over again to bear the brunt of their poor parenting.  The child was the one hungry.  The child was the one ostracized by the other kids because they were annoyed with her daily requests for their lunch.  She defended her parents even though her needs weren’t being met.

The parents weren’t fight against a suggestion that only affected them; they were protesting a decision by leaving their child to deal with the consequences of their non-parenting.

The first time the Meitiv’s children were taken into custody for walking alone to the park, I was willing to give the parents the benefit of the doubt.  This time, I’m not.  In this case, like the student above, I think the children are being asked to bear the brunt of their parent’s decision.  I think the Meitiv’s are getting a clear message that the community — the very same community who is notifying the police — doesn’t believe that their children are ready to be on their own at the park and they are choosing to ignore that message in order to fit their children into their parenting philosophy.  When they do the same thing a second time — ignoring the message the community asked the police to deliver to the family — I think it speaks volumes.

I don’t have a lot of respect for parenting movements because parenting is actually not about the parents.  It’s about the children.  I have a lot more respect for people who say they don’t have a parenting philosophy but instead look at the children they have and parent them in a way that meets their individual needs.  And that means that every child in the house may be parented differently since they have different needs.

Why are we giving labels to the parents?  Free Range Parents, Helicopter Parents?  When parents label themselves with a parenting philosophy, it tells me that the adults in question are more focused on themselves than the people they have the responsiblity to mold.

You don’t get to choose what sort of kid you have.  Which is why I don’t think people should try to fit their child into their parenting philosophy nor decide upon a parenting philosophy before learning who their children is at each stage of life.  You may want to be the type of parent who gives your child a lot of independence, but you may not have the type of child who benefits from a lot of independence.  You may want to be the type of parent who is super-involved in your child’s life, but you may not have the type of child who wants that level of attention.

There are children who thrive with a lot of independence, who have been taught how to handle various situations and have the maturity to carry out the necessary steps in getting help.  Whose parents adequately prepare them with water and snacks before sending them off on their own.  There are a lot of responsible children out there who are ready to stay alone at home before the law allows them to stay alone at home, or walk to the park, or ride their bike to their friend’s house.

Yes, there are free range kids who should be free range kids because that level of independence fits their personal needs.

But there are also a lot of children who haven’t been adequately prepared for the responsibility of that independence who are being asked to care for themselves before they are ready.  And the point is that they are children and lack the skills to communicate that their needs aren’t being met because they don’t even know their own needs.

And that was always the problem with the parents of the lunch-packing student.  They believed children should be capable of packing their own lunch at the age of 12.  And they are correct — it is completely reasonable to expect your child to be capable of packing their own lunch IF the child has been taught about nutrition, the parents help guide a few example lunches so the child knows what to pack, the parents spot check the lunches from time to time to make sure the child is staying on target, and the child shows sound decision-making skills in other areas of their life, leading the parents to believe that their child is also ready to take on the task of feeding themselves.

But wanting an independent child and dumping them into a situation isn’t sound parenting.  It’s foisting your responsibilities onto your child, or another person’s child, or another parent, or the school.

The comment thread on the article is littered with the refrain, “but I walked to the park when I was that age” and that sums up the problem with the discussion surrounding parenting philosophies.  Kids don’t magically know things when they hit a certain age.  They need to be taught life skills.  And moreover, the commenter is not these kids.  Every human is different and should be evaluated for responsibility by their personal capabilities, what they’ve been prepared to know and do, and their support.  Parenting is not one-size-fits-all, which is why I generally find parenting philosophies more dangerous than helpful.

I wish we could stop talking about situations in terms of the parents — free range parent or helicopter parent — and begin focusing on the children.

So I read a home decorating article that described drawer pulls and knobs as the “jewelry” of the kitchen.  Isn’t that a pretty way of thinking about it?  We’ve chosen very plain doors and counters for our kitchen-to-be because I like that clean, austere look.  But the right knob could change everything.

The article made me want to have the greatest drawer pulls of all time. The only problem was that I had no idea where to find such drawer pulls.

Googling commenced.

My first dream drawer pull was in the shape of a racing broom.  I’m using the term “dream drawer pull” because it turns out that no one makes a drawer pull in the shape of a Harry Potter broom.  I could get small broom charms and super glue them to a plain handle, but no one makes handles in the shape of brooms.  Why not?  Someone, get on this.

I thought the handles would compliment the golden snitch I’m planning on hanging from the ceiling along with the Deathly Hallows over the kitchen table.

But fine, I could let go of the idea of the racing broom drawer pulls.  (And instead hang a six-foot broom over the door, right, Josh?)

I then moved onto steampunk gear knobs.  I’ve been considering turning the pantry doors into a Tardis, so this would go with that look.  (Oh, Josh, I may have failed to tell you about that plan.)  These knobs existed, but I need about 55 of them, and you could only purchase one or two from each seller on Etsy.  I want everything to match, so that didn’t work.

Finally, I moved onto octopus drawer pulls.  These also exist.  I know that I have never expressed a great love of octopuses, but octopus knobs feel right.  Unfortunately, the octopuses I found were really expensive.  I mean, considering they’re octopuses and not racing brooms.

Which brought me back to square one.

There is this place that will custom make ceramic drawer pulls and knobs, and you can place any image on the handle.  (Racing brooms!)  The only issue is that I really love the look of silver metal, and I don’t really love the look of ceramic.

So… uh… any whimsical silver metal drawer pulls or knobs you can suggest?  Maybe going with a book theme.  Or a Harry Potter theme.  Or sea creatures.  And not that expensive considering we need 55 of them…

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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The twins and I recently spent the day at a board game cafe.  So it’s a cafe — you can get small salads and sandwiches and desserts, plus any coffee or tea drink.  But you can also pay $2.50 per person for unlimited access to over 500 board games.

The walls of the store are bookcases, and you walk around the different sections and pull down games and bring them to your table.  We started with Clue and then moved on to Life and Trouble.  Then we started the inevitable rapid cycling through games we didn’t know.  There was one that took us 20 minutes to set up but we ended up not playing once we realized we still had 4 pages of rules to read.

We own a lot of board games but being in there made me realize how many fun ones we’ve missed having at home, like Sorry.  And I am definitely purchasing a copy of my favourite game — Clue — this week because the twins loved it, too.

What is your favourite board game?  And do you own a copy?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored posts.