Cereal Box Book Report

A couple of weeks ago Ben selected a book at the library on which to do a book report. The book he choose was Titanic Crossing by Barbara Williams. This was a decision he agonized over, sitting at the big round library table playing eenie-meenie-minie-moe over and over again. In the end he was very happy with his choice, and became quite the book-worm as he read through the book.

I knew that to do a traditional book report with him would be a little a lot frustrating for him me. Writing is not something he enjoys, but rather it is a chore akin to mucking horse stalls (not that he's ever mucked a stall...but, you know, if he had). So, I was delighted when I found this idea for a cereal box book report, a project for which I knew I could get him on board.

It only took him a few days to read the book (like I said, he was a bit of a book-worm, disappearing at odd times to read 'just one more page...'). We set aside an entire week to work on the cereal box book report, taking it one section at a time.

I used the ideas provided here as a basis for the cereal box book report.

Using an empty cereal box, the idea is to transform it into a 3-D hands on book report.

The top of the box gives the pertinent information: the title of the book, the authors name, the number of pages, and the student's rating of the book.

One side of the box, the side that usually gives the ingredients and nutritional information, provides the characters and the setting of the book.

On the back of the box, where you'd typically find a cartoon, a game, or a puzzle, Ben put a Titanic Word Search containing words related to the book and the Titanic. We used a word search generator to create the word search.

The front of the box gives the new name for the cereal (in keeping with the theme of the book) and artistically and creatively shows a little about the book. This part was Ben's favorite. He loves drawing Titanic ships. He gave his cereal the name "Titanic-O's".

The last side of the box contains the summary of the book.

This was a very fun project for Ben, even though it did contain elements of writing. The various ways of sharing information about the book provided a change of pace each day.

Once his cereal box was finished he filmed a short commercial to advertise his cereal: