Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Wizard of Oz!

I grew up watching the Wizard of Oz with my Mom. I loved the music, the bright costumes, and the story. Then at some point, I found out it was based on a book, and I set out to read the book. Then I learned it was a SERIES! I haunted used bookstores looking for books in the series and read the books in no sort of order (thankfully I could do that). I looked forward to the perfect time for a Wizard of Oz book club and I could talk with them about all of the fun characters. Then the summer musical was Wizard of Oz and that was the perfect time for this book and a movie night.

However, it didn’t quite happen the way I was hoping it would.

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Wizard of Oz

 

Dorothy is torn out of Kansas when a tornado carries her house far away. The Good Witch of the North sent her on an adventure through Oz to find a way to get home.

While I loved the story of Dorothy wandering through Oz and all of the odd characters she met, my kids…

did not.

They thought it was just a little too surreal. 

I’m learning that my kids do not have the same love of surreal stories that I do. This does not bode well for my plan to introduce them to the Thursday Next books…

Making it into a Wizard of Oz book club

I’m going to admit, I mainly had them read this because I love the books. Frank Baum himself said it was just a child’s story for fun.

Since his death, doctoral students in need of a thesis have applied all sorts of theories of what his work REALLY meant. 

So, you can have some fun ways to look at this. There’s some great vocabulary in there, and there’s some great imagination creation. This is the perfect book to create a diorama for or maybe create your own map of Oz.

Though, the map in the Oz books has long been my favorite to pour over and imagine visiting all of the different places to see.

But, here are some people who put a bit more study into their Wizard of Oz book club:

• Wizard of Oz learning pack
• Wizard of Oz early learner pack

Our Wizard of Oz movie night

We had a lot of fun brainstorming snacks, and the only thing I regret is not having a snack for each of the main characters. So now our Wizard of Oz book club transitioned to a Wizard of Oz movie night.

As per usual, you can get the labels for these snacks on my subscriber page, not to mention the book and a movie bookmarks freebie coupon (if you’re not on my newsletter, then you should join!)

Wizard of Oz is a popular birthday party idea, so I had lots of inspiration to draw from:

• Wizard of Oz teaching club– I loved her Monkey Bread idea
• Wizard of Oz birthday party– I used her yellow brick road idea
• Another Wizard of Oz birthday party– I liked her melted witch idea
• Final Wizard of Oz birthday party– There were several ideas in here that were interesting, but none that I quite did exactly the same

Now that I’ve shared where I found some ideas, here’s what our Wizard of Oz snacks looked like:

• Flying monkeys- monkey bread, which my kids love
• Melted witch- Sprite and green sherbert
• Toto- dog shortbread cookies
• Ruby slippers- cherry jello, I printed out a high heel shoe pattern, and traced that since I didn’t want to buy a shoe cookie cutter specifically for this
• Poppies- cantaloupe cut into flower shapes
• Cowardly lion- smoked chicken (get it, he’s a chicken)
• Witch’s hat- sugar cones with frosting on them on top of sugar cookies
• Rainbow- fruit roll-up
• Yellow Brick Road- rice krispie treats with some butterscotch chips melted into the mix to make it a bit more yellow

 

More 6th grade ideas

• Historical trades: Silversmith
• Percy Jackson book club
• Mount Saint Helen hands-on lesson
• Black Stallion book club
• Effects of the Seven Years War