Friday, March 15, 2013

Mother Daughter Book Club Month: 100 Dresses

Last month we were the hosts of our "Blueberry Girls" Book Club.  We were really, really excited to have the families over to our house because we only just recently started feeling settled enough to have guests at our new house.

This month's book was the classic - The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Este. Each month we choose a chapter book to read with our daughters and then meet at a rotating house to have a potluck dinner, discuss the book and do related crafts. We chose books from the A Mighty Girl website and discuss themes related to growing up as a girl.



Here's the scene before our guests arrived:



After an interesting book talk about bullying and accepting each other's differences based on the actions of the girls in the story, we moved on to everyone's favorite part of book club - the crafts.

While we were reading the book together, Josie noticed the beautiful and unique illustrations and asked if one of our crafts could be to make illustrations like the ones in the book.  We set up a colored pencil and watercolor station for the girls to create their own illustrations in the style of  Louis Slobodkin.





Next, we made paper dolls with fabric scrap dresses. Our friend Julie (and former teacher of Josie's) who now owns Sewn Studio here in Cincinnati donated two bags of beautiful fabric to inspire the girls to make their own dresses. (Please go check out this beautiful shop if you haven't already & they have really cool classes.)




 Here are the girls' dresses. Isn't it fascinating how different they all are?




Josie's Doll

Our next bookclub meets this weekend. Many of you have asked for more info about how the club works, and it's exciting to hear other moms are considering family bookclubs. I highly recommend it!


Here's the link to Neil Gaiman reading "Blueberry Girl" on youtube. If you have a daughter and don't have this book, change that quickly.