My Montessori second plane child came up with a big project for herself this summer — starting a virtual book club! Back in the thick of COVID when everything was online, she attended a Harry Potter Book Club held via Google Meet through our local library. She had fond memories of that and wanted to do something similar — but this time, she wanted to be in charge! So I asked her what book she would like to do, and she chose the first book of the Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland: The Dragonet Prophecy.

We looked through the book together and decided it could be split into 10 chunks for meetings, then Lila made a poster describing the group. We sent the poster to her teacher, our children’s librarian, and posted it on my social media to get some group members. I screened the people who signed up to make sure they actually have kids at home and weren’t just random old guys who wanted access to kids — everyone had to email me a video of their kid saying hello to Lila and asking to join the book club. Then Lila sent a video back welcoming them!

We searched online together to see what was already out there, but we couldn’t find much. Instead, we wrote the discussion questions together and Lila chose some crafts and games from Pinterest, the book’s website, and some she completely made up. We decided to share all of it with you in case you want to lead a book club on Wings of Fire!

To view the discussion questions, click here.

The crafts and games that Lila planned:

• Would You Rather? Game (written by Lila)
• Draw your own version of a dragon
• Create your own Wings of Fire book cover
• Write your own prophecy
• Make your own dragon wings with recycled obects
• Draw dragonets hatching
• Which Dragonet Are You? quiz
• Make a dragon puppet
• Make a dragon corner bookmark
• Wings of Fire trivia game (written by Lila)

Each week, the kids meet via Google Meet to discuss that week’s chapters and then do a craft or activity. We started with 16 kids ages 6-10 and have a solid group of 8-10 kids coming back each week. I am supervising the group from offscreen, and it has been so amazing to hear these kids discussing the book together and just having a good time. I have heard such great feedback from the parents of other kids in the group, and it’s really been giving Lila a chance to be a leader for the first time outside of our own home. Our group is almost over for the summer, and I have a feeling it will be something we’ll have to do again in the future because it was just so much fun!