March Meeting Wrap-Up

The Book Buddies Book Club met this afternoon to discuss our March book, How Oliver Olson Changed the World by Claudia Mills.  We had a great discussion followed by an incredibly fun and messy activity!

We began with our lightning-round trivia which everyone did very well with.  Everyone remembered almost every detail of Oliver and quite a bit of space trivia as well. 

Our discussion began with talking about Oliver and his relationship with his very overprotective parents.  We talked about why they were so overbearing with Oliver and how that changed over the course of the story.  It was obvious that his parents loved him a lot but we were all happy when they realized that they had to let him do things for himself be more independent.

We thought about the pros and cons of having our parents do all of our homework for us and decided that although it might be fun at first, in the end it would not be good because you would never learn anything or grow to be an independent person.

We discussed Mrs. O'Neill's notion that "one person with a big idea can change the world" and thought about all the people in history who have had a big impact on the world including Einstein, JFK, astronauts, scientists, politicians and many, many more.

In the end we agreed that because of the new information and our changing understanding of space, Pluto should not still be considered a planet.  It is important to be open to changing our ideas about things as new information becomes available and not be stuck in old ways of thinking just because that's the way things have always been.

It was a great discussion although we were mixed in our overall reactions to the book and whether or not we would recommend it to our friends.

Following out discussion we created a group project - a large-scale diorama of the planets in space just like Oliver and Crystal made!  It was great fun, although incredibly messy with glue and lots and lots of paint.

Painting the planets

Placing the planets in our diorama

The finished product!

I'm not sure our model of the planets in space is entirely accurate, but we sure had a good time making it!

It was a terrific meeting and thanks to all the Book Buddies members who attended.  See you next month!