More Celebrating Characters We Love

Last school year's Percy Jackson event was such a success that I started thinking of how to offer something similar for the younger grades this year. When I took more than three seconds to think about what characters make the kids crazy excited, I thought of Star Wars. Our Star Wars basket is one of the first students run to in the Hub, and I try to continue adding to it when I find a new book at a bookstore.

I enlisted a small group of 2nd and 3rd grade Star Wars fanatics to help me design the special day, and they decided that we call it the Star Wars Marathon (I love that the event is 45 minutes after school, and we are calling it a marathon!). Again, I'm keeping it simple with six different stations and having kids rotate at their leisure.

Here are the stations--all names created by our organizing team

1. Death Star Coloring (color your favorite character)
2. Mustafar Battle (show off your light saber moves)
3. Star Wars Structures (putting a ton of Legos out and some ideas of how to make something Star Wars-ish)
4. The Quest for R2D2 (take a quiz to show what you know)
5. Force Jump Training (a non-violent Star Wars online game)
6. Jedi Archives (our graphing station to view our favorites)

Using Photopeach, we made a short promotional video to get people excited about the event. I adore Photopeach.


While all this planning has been going on, the 4th and 5th graders have already begun planning the next event--without me because I was helping with the younger students. I am told that Diary of a Wimpy Kid will be the next Celebrating Characters We Love. Talk about a gradual release of responsibility...