Kids Book Activity Inspired by The Queen of France

Hooray! It’s finally here. Today is the first ever Poppins Book Nook Blog Hop. On the last Monday of every month we will be sharing a variety of book-inspired activities on a specific topic. This month’s topic is Knights, Princesses, and Castles.

Our Book

If you read my introductory post this month, you already know that we chose to read The Queen of France by Tim Wadham.

Rose, the main character of this story,  is feeling royal as she wakes up one morning, so she embarks on a day of imaginative play. Her mother and father play along as Rose pretends to be the Queen of France.

When the “Queen of France” first visits, Rose’s mother is planting “bumpy sticks.” The Queen scoffs at the ugly sticks, but Rose’s mother explains that soon those sticks will grow into a beautiful green plant with pink flowers, a rose bush. She says that she named Rose after this flower. The story goes on with more of Rose’s pretend play, but Lovey was so fixated on the roses that we chose to use this part of the story as our inspiration.

Book-Inspired Activities

Rose Hunt

The first thing we did after reading this story was go on a hunt for roses. There are many rose bushes in our neighborhood, so we thought we could find some beautiful roses. However, none of them were blooming yet, and instead we found a bunch of “bumpy sticks” like Rose’s mother was planting in the story. It was wonderful for Lovey to stop and take notice of them, because we usually only stop to look more closely at them when they are in bloom. I love that this book inspired us to look a little more closely.

Then we started looking for roses as we were out and about during our regular activities. We found this beautiful rose on our way to a family dinner one night, and we just had to stop and take a closer look at it.

We didn’t have an opportunity yet, but I also think it would be fun to visit a rose garden after reading this book.

Crown of Roses Craft

With the memory of the beautiful pink rose still fresh in our minds, we decided to make a Queen’s crown…full of pink roses. We used an egg carton, pipe cleaners, paint, and glitter. Visit Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas to see a full  egg carton floral wreath tutorial and an adorable variation of this craft.

Dress-Up

One of the best parts of this book is seeing how Rose gets so engaged in dramatic play, so we simply had to play dress-up to go along with this story. Lovey and Tinker both dress up like princesses and queens regularly, so this wasn’t a stretch.  However, I did love to see Lovey incorporating some of the story elements into their play.

Writing 

At the end of dinner Rose decides she feels scary, so she heads to her bedroom to put on a new costume. Younger kids could draw a picture about what they think will happen next.Older kids could write a sequel to this book and tell a story about what Rose chooses as her new costume.

Have you read this story? What other activities would you do to go along with the plot?