We started out with our usual short group discussion. I went through each of the characters and gave a quick summary about which holiday they celebrate and what happens in their story. The holiday focused books were only published for the earliest groupings of American Girls, so this mainly focused on about 8 characters.
Our activities:
Human Dreidel
Image from openclipart.org |
I found this game idea here, and it sounded like a great tie in to the celebration of Hanukkah. The version I came up with was pretty simple. I divided our program room floor into four spaces using masking tape on the floor. I wrote the words corresponding to each side of the dreidel on pieces of tagboard and taped those down as well. The kids were each given 8 gumdrops as their "gelt". I also set aside a small pile of gumdrops for them to prospectively win. Each child would spin around with their eyes closed, and the space they would land on would determine what happened to their "gelt". For more specific directions you can see the basic directions for the dreidel game here. The kids seemed to enjoy the activity, even though a couple were not a fan of the gumdrops.
Ornament Shuffle
Photo from openclipart.org |
Gift exchange
Photo from openclipart.org |
For our gift exchange game I try to do something different each year. This year we played a game I called "If you...". I can't remember where I found it, so if it sounds familiar please let me know. The basic idea is that you have the kids sit in chairs in a circle. One wrapped gift is on each chair. The kids all choose a chair and switch chairs based on "If you..." questions. The gifts stay on the chairs. For instance you could say "If you have a brother." and the kids who had brothers would have to get up and move to another chair. At the end they open the gift at whichever seat they are currently at. It is not only fun, it also helps the kids learn a little bit about each other.
Snack and craft
Our craft was to decorate a printable template for a doll party hat. I used the one found here. As our snack we had a few different snacks representing some of the American Girl characters. We had popcorn (because Rebecca wanted to be in the movies), gingerbread cookies (because Samantha makes a gingerbread house), Fritos (invented during Kit's time period), and apple juice. This was also a time they could do a wordsearch or enjoy playing a Holiday ABC game. Feel free to use these printable activities in any and all programming.Another great year of our American Girl Club has ended. To look back on some of the things we did you can head on over and check out my other American Girl related posts.
- Grace, 2015 Girl of the Year
- Samantha, from 1904
- Caroline, from 1812
- Kaya, from 1764
- Addy, from 1864
- Josefina, from 1824
- Isabelle, 2014 Girl of the Year
- Best Friends
- Summer Fun
- Felicity, from 1774
- Molly, from 1944
If you ever have any questions about this or any programs I'd love to answer them! Feel free to comment here, reach me on Twitter (@MsKellyTweets), or email me at marrak at libcoop.net.
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