Posted by Paul Flint on May 25, 2001 at 12:39:04 from 194.238.50.10:
I should welcome an exchange of ideas and views on indoor (or outdoor)events to encourage children to take an interest in AR's books.
One successful idea which we tried recently at a school was to have boat races. We have made some wooden boats, based on the boats in the stories, using an idea most often associated with "horse racing"! The boats are pulled along a course on strings by seated contestants who wind the string in as fast as possible on reels. People can bet on the boats to raise money for charity, and we gave hardback copies of the AR books as prizes for the winning "skippers". Between each race, of which there were 6, the Head Teacher read relevant extracts from the stories, and we had the AR videos projected silently onto a large screen in the background.
The children were aged between 5 and 12.
A few years earlier we held a quiz, with a real, but small sailing dinghy in the corner of a Junior school hall, with items from each of the 12 stories (hurricane lamp, egg, bicycle pump, etc). Children had to read the books to find the answers, and the prize was a day's sailing in a traditional wooden dinghy.
I know that a lot of people have taken an active and successful interest in promoting AR's novels. I am sure that if these ideas were shared it would help to "spread the word".
Thanks!