Drop #4: The Night Before Valentine's Day by Natasha Wing

Hello! I'm still here. Yesterday afternoon (Friday) my oldest son and I did a book drop. When I pick him up from school (which is usually only once a week or so, otherwise my husband picks him up) we sometimes stop at a fabulous cookie shop on the way home. It's been weeks since we went there and luckily I had a book pack in the van. So.............we smuggled the pack into the store in my purse and left it right outside the doors to the bathrooms. The bathrooms are around a corner from where the customers pick out their cookies so we were able to leave it there without anyone seeing us. I snapped a quick photo before my camera battery died. Hopefully someone will love finding this book and doing the fun valentine counting activity. CLICK HERE to read the full post about the book pack for this title.

NOTE: I felt comfortable leaving this book pack inside a store since clearly a cookie shop wouldn't sell anything similar to what is contained in the pack. I am still hoping that one of these days the recipient of a book pack will leave me a comment. I am dying to know whether or not my packs are finding happy homes. But I also love the "no strings attached" model of giving.

Drop #3: Goodnight Moon (and an interview---YIPPEE!)

Tonight both my boys had swimming lessons at our local YMCA. Afterwards I did a book drop in the family locker room.......locker #14. I had planned this ahead and taken the book pack and my camera with me. Luckily no one saw me (except my husband). I hope someone finds it soon. It's killing me that I haven't heard what happened to my first two drops. This book pack was for the book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. Sorry for the bad photo. My camera battery was just about to die so I didn't get a better one. Plus I was trying to be surreptitious. :-)







In other news...........Shannon from Letters, Numbers and Books Oh My! asked to interview me about Random Acts of Reading for her blog. She posted the interview today. I was so thrilled to do this since it's my first blog interview!! You can head over and read it RIGHT HERE.

Drop #2: The Hat by Jan Brett

Today after I was done teaching preschool my little boy and I went to the grocery store in our town. On the way out I dropped off a book pack on the bench in front. The bench is protected by an overhang so hopefully it will be protected until it is found. I was rethinking the whole "drop" idea and truly I do think it's probably better to drop the books outside. I was wondering if my other book pack had been found at the discount store and thought about going there to check. Then I thought if I went there I might move it to a more prominent spot. But then I was thinking how weird it would feel to pick it up and move it even though I'm the one that left it there. And that made me think that people who see it, especially in a store, might feel the same way. Even though it's not an item of merchandise, it would feel a little like shop-lifting. So.........I dropped the pack on a bench and scurried to my van. I took the photo out the window of my van. There are lots of people going in and out of the grocery store all day so I didn't want to plunk down the pack then stand there and take a photo of it. You can barely see the pack in the photo. It is lying flat on top of the bench. When I was coming out of the store one of my preschool students and his mom were going in. I thought it would be so cool if he is the one who finds it on the way out. So I'll let you know if that's what happens. His mom would probably get online to check out the website on the label and then she would figure out who left the book.

I bought a paperback copy of this book at our local county storehouse for 25 cents. It was in great condition.

Jan Brett's books are so fabulous and The Hat is no exception. She is such a gifted illustrator and author and makes so many great resources available on her website. In the bag with the book I included some animal puppets that I printed from Jan Brett's website. Before the book drop I read the story to my boys and they acted it out with the puppets. That's one great benefit of doing this........I'm reading and doing activities with my own two boys even more. I LOVE Jan Brett's books and own most of them. You can find some more activity ideas for this book over at Wondersome Storytime.

Drop #1: Corduroy by Don Freeman

Saturday evening the boys and I made our first book drop! We left the book pack in a local discount store on a rack with the crossword puzzle books. I am curious about how people will respond to this when they find it. When I was looking at The Toy Society's blog today I noticed that all their drops are outdoors. Here in the midwest right now we have about 2 feet of snow on the ground and the temperature is hovering right above 0 degrees right now. So we dropped it in a store. Perhaps the store employees will confiscate it, but my hope is that they will then take it home to share with their own children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, etc. We'll have to wait and see. Below you can see the photo I snapped of our dropped book pack.

If you have found this book pack, please leave a comment so I know how you found it, what you thought, who you shared it with, etc. If you've never left a comment on a blog before, just scroll down and click on Post a Comment. Then follow the directions. You can leave a comment anonymously.

Some people have asked about whether I will make it possible for others to participate in this project. The answer is.......YES! I am trying to figure out a little more about how to facilitate that right now. However, this post contains a link to the activity I included with my copy of Corduroy. If you do a drop on your own, for now you could leave me a comment on this post telling about it with a link to your own blog if you have one. As the project grows the process for this will most likely be adapted. I'm also working on a way to make the labels I'm using for the book packs available for download so we can have consistency for those who wish to participate.

Corduroy by Don Freeman is a classic children's book that celebrated its 40th birthday in 2008. That means this book is just a little bit older than me. Ha! Hopefully it will be treasured by whoever finds it. I have printed off a button patterning activity from Homeschoolshare to go with this book.

Before we made the drop today I read the book to my 4 year old and he did the button patterning activity two times. When I told him we would then leave it for another little boy or girl to find he was excited. He suggested that we not leave it in the middle of the road because a car would squish it. I assured him that we wouldn't leave it in the road. :0)

Until next time.............keep reading!!