Book Group: The Secret Garden

About once a month we get together and talk about a book we've all read. This month it was the Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. We met in the local park. The first activity was to draw/color a garden - the one you imagine your secret garden to be. Then Ms. S. collected all the pictures and passed them out to different people. The children then talked about how the liked or didn't like the pictures they were looking at and why.

Next two children presented either a synopsis of the story or some of their favorite parts. C. did a little puppet show.

C. did a synopsis of her favorite parts.

Next we sowed seeds for butterflies in the butterfly meadows.

Then Ms. S. conducted a discussion on various points related to the "Secret Garden" learning and thinking about how Mary Lennox is like a seed in the story. She is hard and unfeeling in the beginning, like a seed. But then she is "planted" starts to make friends and feel "rooted" to her new home. She blossoms and helps others to blossom.

The last activity was to make an individual garden. We started with dirt and added moss, rocks, Christmas cactus. Ms. S. provided a mirror, so there could be a lake or pond or blue aquarium gravel for a creek or river. She also had miniature animals.

Some of the parents commented on how the most recent movie took some liberties with the story - how the children have a primitive chanting ceremony in the dark around a bonfire. Not very realistic if they were trying to hide the garden from everyone else.

In the book they chant in the daylight affirming thoughts and at one point even sing the Doxology recognizing the hand of a divine creator.