Theme Days: Diary of a Wimpy Kid Day
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“Let me just say for the record that I think middle school is the dumbest idea ever invented. You got kids like me who haven't hit their growth spurt yet mixed in with these gorillas who need to shave twice a day.” Greg Heffley cracks me up a bunch of times in The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney. His “diary” hits the mark for life in middle school. Even though my kids are homeschooled, they totally related.
The “reluctant reader” is a thing. My son was one of them. I say “was” because that all changed when I introduced him to Jeff Kinney’s books. The books are narrated by a middle school boy, and my son related to it so much that he literally read a book per day. My daughter did the same. Since they finished the series in about two weeks, it was time for a Diary of a Wimpy Kid theme day. This day is designed for kids who have read at least one book from the Diary series.
Activity Book
The series’ publisher website has fun coloring and activity sheets, complete with teacher lesson plans. This is a great spot to go print off activities and worksheets for your day. Also, Fandom is a great resource for researching games, foods, and other themed ideas. The Coop Activity Book will enhance the educational value of your themed day, with diving deeper into the author, the significance of diaries, types of literature, cartoonist study, and more. My kids always ask to do my homemade Mad Lib-ish page first and get such joy out of telling their word play stories. You can download The Coop Activity Book for free here:
Our Choices
Jeff Kinney says, “Because it’s our choices that make us who we are.” I used my letter board to display Kinney’s quote - it’s such a good lesson about making good decisions. You can display this quote on your white board or chalkboard, or have your kids write it as copywork. We spent about five minutes discussing how choices determine our future and ourselves. You can utilize some examples from your kids’ lives to discuss choices they made and how that communicated what kind of person they are.
Who is Jeff Kinney, by Patrick Kinney
We love the Who is... series! These books are a great resource - not just about the person you are studying, but also about so many other books, places, historical events, and more. I set up the kids with their Coop Activity Book, and we read over the Jeff Kinney trivia questions so they could answer them during our read-aloud of Who is Jeff Kinney. My kids played with Legos and play-dough, and they jump-roped and cuddled our kitties while I read aloud for one and a half hours. They loved it. This book includes so many stories about Jeff Kinney from his childhood - stories that were actually depicted in his fictitious diary books too! We also learned about his favorite cartoonists as a child. I love teaching my kids about the authors of their favorite books.
Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side
These are truly “The Funnies.” I bought these Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side books so my kids could learn about my favorite comic strips - and Jeff Kinney’s favorite too! They were a major inspiration to Jeff Kinney and definitely deserved about one hour of our time on this day. Our study in The Coop Activity Book teaches about anthropomorphism and gives an opportunity for kids to try the literary tool themselves. My kids loved picking an object from their room, giving it human characteristics, and creating their own comic strip. There were lots of giggles when they presented their cartoons to our family.
Games
There’s a new version of Rock, Paper, Scissors - and it’s called Cheese Touch, Mud Hand, and Snowball. Only those who have read the series will get it. The scoring sheet is available on the publisher’s website. My kids love it! They spent about 10 minutes playing it while also checking their cheat sheet for what beats what. Another game we played was Poptropica. This virtual world was created and developed by Jeff Kinney, and has dozens of worlds including a Wimpy Boardwalk world and a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory world. First, I had my kids read the graphic novel Poptropica (written by a friend of Kinney’s) the weekend prior to our themed day, so that they felt a connection to the video game on the themed day. I gave them 30 minutes to play…it was an app downloaded to my phone - which meant time was super limited (I can’t NOT have my phone!!!!). Visit Poptropica’s website with a lot more print-outs and activities, including Mad Libs, for purchase.
Sibling Love
Jeff Kinney and Greg Heffley have siblings...and lots of fun stories about their siblings. Many of us have great stories too. In our Coop Activity Book, we provide a page to talk about that and give each other’s siblings encouraging words. As kids get older, it can get harder and harder for kids to tell their siblings that they love them. This page offers a great opportunity to do that. If your child does not have siblings, then you can pick a cousin or best friend instead.
Science Experiment
My kids’ favorite part of the day was performing the Egg Strength Test/Experiment that was briefly mentioned in one of the books. It was so funny because they thought the eggs could only hold an empty egg carton...but after nervously piling on book after book, they got more confident and were willing to try large rocks and 10 pound dumbbells. It wasn’t until our five-year-old stood on the egg tray that the eggs finally cracked. Then we just briefly discussed the superb design of an egg shell and how it redistributes the weight. Make sure you don’t explain any of this to your kids ahead of time, and let their uninformed assumptions be their guide. Let them make a hypothesis for how much weight it can stand, and then test that hypothesis. The suspense was killing them! It was so fun. This activity took about 30 minutes as we had to keep coming up with heavier items to place on the egg tray. It is included in The Coop Activity Book.
Movie
There are a few movies based upon the books, so we finished our day by watching the first one. It was clever and funny for adults and kids. My five-year-old is too young to read or relate to the books, but she really enjoyed the movie. Capping our day off with the movie was the perfect ending to a rich educational day based upon the diaries of a wimpy kid named Greg Heffley.
Creating the Scene
Red, black, and white table-cloths and placemats, the series of books, and coloring sheets covered my table. Jeff Kinney’s favorite literature, including Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, decorated the top of our piano (this book is also offered as a book report page for The Coop activity book). I also printed off the characters’ face masks available on the publisher’s website and laminated them to be placemats. Later, we cut out the masks and had fun taking pictures. I played Jon Bon Jovi and Elton John throughout the day (Kinney’s favorite musicians) and had my kids eat cheese (to get the “cheese-touch!”). Coloring sheets with speech bubbles were on the table too, and my kids actually fought over which ones they could fill-in themselves. I consider that success!
Whether your kids like to read or not, they may just become your dream reader when they start on this series. It’s full of middle school humor that every age enjoys, plus it is a creative way of introducing your kids to cartooning and diary-keeping. Since reading the series, my son, super inspired by the books, is now keeping his own daily diary. Sometimes he even reads it to me - and it’s a precious moment where he is giving me a window into his heart-felt desires, opinions, and perceptions of his life. I get to see what he values and what he’s learned. As Jeff Kinney says, “I think if everyone would write down the funny stories from their own childhoods, the world would be a better place.” My son is writing his own story, inspired by Greg Heffley’s diary - and my son titled it himself - with my most favorite title of all... The Diary of a Happy Kid.
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