Book Club: A Little Princess and The Lost Prince

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In our homeschool co-op, we have a book club. It is absolutely THE. BEST. In fact, I'm not even homeschooling any more, yet I still help out and my kids attend because it's so darn great. My friend Heather and I do these together, and I'm going to start sharing these with you, so if you want to do a family or community book club with kids, this might help springboard some ideas for you. (Hint: No book reports allowed!)

Books: A Little Princess and The Lost Prince

Every book club, we choose two books that share a common theme. We either use a "boy" and a "girl" book (I know, many people hate those terms...) or else a book for older kids and a book for younger kids. We ask every family to read at least one of the books.

This time, we did A Little Princess, and The Lost Prince (less well known, and sometimes printed as The Lost Prince of Samavia. You can find my son's review here). Both are by Frances Hodgson Burnett and both are AMAZING.

(As an aside: I wanted my younger boys to experience A Little Princess, but wasn't sure that 9 and 7 year old boys were up for a "princess" book. So I was sneaky. I asked them to hurry and get ready for bed and I would read them a "surprise" book. I kept the title covered and just started reading. They were hooked from then on!)

Theme: Being True to the Royal Within You

I adore these books because they both speak about living up to the royalty that is within you. Both children have less than ideal circumstances, yet they both behave as their best selves- with self discipline, hard work and kindness. One acts as though she were a princess when she has hard times, and the other is trained to be a prince- which he unknowingly is! They also both value education. What a great books to have in our children's hearts! As Christians, we also added some spiritual thoughts to this theme.

Activities

• Tea Party
  

Since both children in the stories use good manners, and tea parties are mentioned in A Little Princess, we decided to have a tea party and teach etiquette. My friend Heather shared what manners looked like in olden times (you can find some here), and then taught manners for today, (including cellphone use!).

• Book Discussion

For this, we went over the basic plot, themes of the stories, and what we each learned or liked best.

Here are some good resources for questions to ask, as well as enrichment ideas for A Little Princess. This website also has good stuff. Sadly, I couldn't find anything for free online for The Lost Prince. But if you email me, I will make some especially for you!

• Three legged race
  

In The Lost Prince, Marco and his friend "The Rat" need to carry a special message to several different cities. "The Rat" has a handicapped leg, so Marco helps him quite a bit. We teamed up older kids with younger ones, so that they could be aware of the littles and try to match their stride. Everyone loved it!

• Geography Bowl

We chose not to do geography due to time constraints, but since both books refer to other countries, it would be super easy to have a geography game while kids eat their lemonade and cookies!

• Scavenger Hunt
  

When Marco and The Rat go on their quest, they have to have good memories and notice small details. Heather's cute daughter Kaitlyn made up a fun scavenger hunt and had to find the key words. At the end, the kids found...

• Decorate Your Own Crowns
  

I found these crowns on Amazon, and thought they were pretty reasonable. Then I got some jewels with adhesive on them and let the kids decorate their own crowns.


All in all, we had a great time, and these books really do touch hearts. It was pretty darn simple and didn't take much prep- that's my kind of activity!