Make Reading a Hobbit

(This is a catch-up post.  The now-in-progress renovation and related construction kept us too busy to post events as they came and went.  We'll try to make up for it and post regularly throughout the rest of the school year.)

For our winter break program, we capitalized on the new movie adaptation of The Hobbit and went all-out Tolkien.  With renovation deadlines looming, The Hobbit wasn't quite as extensive a program as The Hunger Games or Harry Potter, nor is The Hobbit as popular as those more modern adventures, but we had an extremely clever tag (we thought) line for this program:  Make Reading A Hobbit!  We also appear to have an H-theme going on, so bully for us!

Our Hobbit program contained the same sort of passive program that's been so far successful for us--quizzes, trivia, coloring contests (using J.R.R. Tolkien's original illustrations as inspiration), and drawings.  We had, as always, great fun buying prizes thanks to the plethora of Hobbit merchandise available for sale.  We also utilized our whiteboard for some Hobbit fun:  "What's your worst hobbit?" (we love puns) and a Gollum-drawing contest.

Gollum drawing winner (we were really impressed)

Tuesday's tutorial featured a riddle contest, using the famous riddles from Bilbo Baggins' show-down with Gollum as well as a few old chestnuts gathered online.  There was a small turnout for the riddle contest (mostly our Library Club members) but that allowed us to really let the students take their time in thinking out the answers to the riddles (they are clearly not used to thinking so literally!) and then to shower prizes upon them.

Yes, that is Elvish on the whiteboard behind our Riddle Contest winners.

Thursday's tutorial featured a "Second Breakfast" (with starving students hovering impatiently around us while we laid out baked goods and little oranges) and a showing of the 1980s animated Hobbit.