ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

Start your experience of this story by introducing the kids to the author, so kids can see the connections between her lived story and her written story.

Below is our kid-friendly biography of L.M. Montgomery—it's a great discussion starter. If you'd like a worksheet for author note-taking and conversation-starting, there's one in our printables set.

For further information

We encourage you to read through the interviews and biographical articles about L.M. Montgomery in our Learning Links.

Anyone who reads Anne of Green Gables imagines going there and seeing the "White Way of Delight" and the other beautiful places Anne loved. What a fantastic field trip that would be! We can at least get there virtually.

Start inside Green Gables with this quick but lovely unnarrated tour of the house, or take the more detailed tour below it:

Then step outside by browsing this "All Things Anne" tourism page , which has lots of photos of the places mentioned in the story.

Next, pull back from "Avonlea" (Cavendish) to view this very short overview of the island province
from Canadian Geographic:

Then have the kids find Prince Edward Island off the coast of Nova Scotia, either on the web or on a globe. (Or use the setting worksheet in our printables set, which includes a printed map.)

Finally, check out the other islands in the province, and have the kids come up with some better names for those that sound like their namer was really tired that day. You know Anne would never have let Hog Island, Fish Island, and Bird Island go unrenamed. Make sure the kids rename them with some fabulously imaginative names that will elevate them.

For more imaginative practice elevating ordinary names to magnificent ones, use the creative writing worksheet "What's in a Name?" in our printables set.

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The point of this activity is that kids instinctively know what that book character person would say and do. That's a valuable life lesson (what people expect from you depends on your actions) and it demonstrates a key writing skill (having your character act in certain ways helps readers know what to expect from him/her.

(By the way, this activity pairs well with the characterization worksheet "Show, Don't Tell" in our printables set.)

PREP

1. Type up four scenarios, one per page, wherein story characters are placed in a modern situation that would bring out their most notable characteristics. For instance, Anne's imagination, Matthew's shyness, Marilla's strictness, and Mrs. Lynde's know-it-allness. Or just use the four scenarios in our printables set!  (It also includes some charade prompts as an easier alternative for younger kids.) These are our scenario titles, for inspiration:

   Matthew faces thirteen Miss Canada contestants!

   Anne gets stuck in Walmart!

   Mrs. Lynde meets the press!*

   Marilla gets a laptop!

2. Make two copies of each scenario—one for you, and one for each scenario's acting team.
   

3. Gather some props. This activity is all the more fun if you have a few simple costume items on hand—a wig, a hat, some spectacles will add to the hilarity and drama.

SETUP

Explain to the kids that they'll be imagining how a character from Anne of Green Gables would respond to being placed in a modern, new situation.

Tell them that for each scenario, volunteer actors will be a narrator, a character from the story, and one or more supporting characters. Those choosing to play “modern” characters and narrators just need to read their lines with dramatic flair that would make Anne proud. Those who take the part of a character from the book, their challenge is to get “into the shoes (and head)” of that character and respond as he or she would.

DIRECTIONS

1. For each scenario, take volunteers. We’re always surprised at how many kids are eager to get on stage and be a “story somebody,” but if you don't get many takers, you might reassure them they won't have to memorize their lines, just read or imagine them aloud.

2. Hand out a prompt (or our prompt printout) to each scenario's team. Give them a chance to read it and get their heads around the situation and what they'll be doing and saying. Then have each team cut their scenario apart so each actor is holding his or her part to read.

3. Make sure the actors understand the setup, so they know what to pretend and where to sit or stand.

4. Then let them act it out—the more hammyness and drama the better! If the "book characters" get stuck when trying to respond, pause to brainstorm together how their character would respond. It’s fine to help each other out and great to cheer each other on!

5. Help them get the point—that whether fictional or real, it's character that makes someone knowable and predictable, for better and for worse. Ask the kids what they think makes them predictable, and how they feel about that!

This simple craft requires only a little bit of preparation and is easy to explain and do. Because you’ll need about 30 minutes for the paint to dry before reframing and conditioning the chalkboards, plan to do this project in two short parts, with a break (or another activity) sandwiched in between.

SUPPLIES

• 8” x 10” (or so) diploma-type wooden frames, one per child. We found ours at a “dollar store,” but they're also available on Amazon.

• chalkboard paint, available at any craft or building-supply store, and on Amazon

• paintbrushes, 1″ – 2”

• chalk and an eraser or rag

• marker – use silver if the back of the frame is dark

PREP

• Open the backs of the frames and remove the glass and paper inserts; you won’t need them. Set the board or cardboard backing back inside the frame, but don’t secure the fasteners on the back. This will be your chalkboard surface. (For safety reasons, use the cardboard instead of the glass.)

• Cover the table with several layers of newspapers or plastic-backed tablecloth.

• Pour the paint into serving-size containers.

SETUP

Symbolism: Ask the kids what the slate in the story might stand for, besides Anne's temper. Here are a few possible answers:

• the importance of learning from (and then erasing) mistakes

• Anne’s first interaction with Gilbert Blythe

• her years of study and determination to learn and to earn high marks

• her eventual vocation of teacher 

History: Show this video about the origin of slate pencils and slates, which also discusses the use of a slate:

Explain the project and show your model, then read the inspiration.

INSPIRATION

“Mr. Phillips said my spelling was disgraceful and he held up my slate so that everybody could see it, all marked over. I felt so mortified, Marilla [. . .]” – Ch. 15

Gilbert reached across the aisle, picked up the end of Anne’s long red braid, held it out at arm’s length and said in a piercing whisper:

“Carrots! Carrots!”

Then Anne looked at him with a vengeance!

She did more than look. She sprang to her feet, her bright fancies fallen into cureless ruin. She flashed one indignant glance at Gilbert from eyes whose angry sparkle was swiftly quenched in equally angry tears.

“You mean, hateful boy!” she exclaimed passionately. “How dare you!”

And then – wack! Anne had brought her slate down on Gilbert’s head and cracked it – slate not head – clear across. —Ch. 15

DIRECTIONS

Part 1

Hand out the frames and cardboard  inserts. Ask the kids to write their names on the back with a marker.

Explain that they’ll be removing the cardboard from the frame, and painting the front with chalkboard paint.

Here's a demo of the process:

Let the slates dry for about 30 minutes while taking a break or doing another activity. You might use this time to talk about how much Anne changes by the end of the book, and in what ways she's still the same Anne. 

Part 2

Demonstrate how to fit the painted boards back inside the frames and fasten them. Here's a video to help:

Tell the kids that in 24 hours they’ll be able to condition the boards with chalk. Show them how to condition it by covering it with a piece of chalk held sideways, then erase the board.

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SUPPLIES & PREP

Invitation (optional): Write up a fancy Victorian invitation to give to each child, or use the one in our printables set.

Frummery (optional): Since Marilla allows Anne to decorate the table with "frummery" after all, you might like to provide your kids with real or faux ferns, roses, and other foliage to decorate their own place setting (or a whole table, if you're sitting together).

Raspberry cordial: Storebought raspberry juice, enhanced with fresh berries, represents the mistake that cost Anne Mrs. Barry's approval, and many precious hours with Diana. If you'd like to make the real thing like Marilla did, here's a recipe.

Sponge cake: The kids will guess that cordial is on the BookBites menu, but not the accidentally-liniment-flavored cake Anne served Mrs. Allan, from Chapter 21. Make or buy a regular angel food or pound cake, then slice and fill it with raspberry jam, and frost it with jam–flavored icing (canned is fine!). 

Now cut and remove one slice of cake and douse it with liniment—just for smelling, of course. Keep this piece on a separate plate. 😅

In the classroom, be sure to have the bottle of liniment and a bottle of vanilla extract nearby, ideally poured into some unlabeled old fashioned bottles.

SETUP

Tell the kids you'd intended to bake them a vanilla-flavored cake, to represent Anne’s sincere efforts to do the right thing with care and diligence. However—and here you hold up your bottles of liniment and vanilla with a sheepish grin—you did indeed (so you'll say) make the very same mistake that Anne did. Your props had been close at hand as you baked, and you had confused the two bottles.

Then you'll sadly passed around a piece of the spoiled, would-be cake for them to smell. Convinced of your Anne-ish error, they'll resign themselves to missing out on cake.

But you'll quickly regain their confidence and adoration by producing your untainted, delicious cake—minus one slice!

(Once when we taught this workship, Becky was at the back of the classroom during snack time, having cut slices of the good cake for the two of us, when she accidentally picked up the slice of BAD cake and took a big bite. The face she made was exactly like the one Mrs. Allan must have made. The irony of this was intensified by the fact that, like Mrs. Allan, she’s a minister’s wife.)

Between bites and sips, read parts of Marmion and Lady of the Lake, and sing “Nelly of the Hazel Dell,” the 1853 song that Diana teaches Anne. It’s actually quite morbid—and perfectly suited to Anne’s dramatic nature—so exagerrated performances make the song a little more lighthearted and funny.

INSPIRATION

Raspberry cordial

When Anne came back from the kitchen Diana was drinking her second glassful of cordial; and, being entreated thereto by Anne, she offered no particular objection to the drinking of a third. The tumblerfuls were generous ones and the raspberry cordial was certainly very nice.

“The nicest I ever drank,” said Diana. “It’s ever so much nicer than Mrs. Lynde’s, although she brags of hers so much. It doesn’t taste a bit like hers.” 

[ . . . ]

“Mrs. Lynde was up to see Mrs. Barry today and Mrs. Barry was in an awful state,” [Anne] wailed. “She says that I set Diana drunk Saturday and sent her home in a disgraceful condition. And she says I must be a thoroughly bad, wicked little girl and she’s never, never going to let Diana play with me again. Oh, Marilla, I’m just overcome with woe.”

Marilla stared in blank amazement.

“Set Diana drunk!” she said when she found her voice. “Anne are you or Mrs. Barry crazy? What on earth did you give her?”

“Not a thing but raspberry cordial,” sobbed Anne. “I never thought raspberry cordial would set people drunk, Marilla—not even if they drank three big tumblerfuls as Diana did. Oh, it sounds so—so—like Mrs. Thomas’s husband! But I didn’t mean to set her drunk.”

“Drunk fiddlesticks!” said Marilla, marching to the sitting room pantry. There on the shelf was a bottle which she at once recognized as one containing some of her three-year-old homemade currant wine for which she was celebrated in Avonlea, although certain of the stricter sort, Mrs. Barry among them, disapproved strongly of it. And at the same time Marilla recollected that she had put the bottle of raspberry cordial down in the cellar instead of in the pantry as she had told Anne. —Ch. 16

Sponge cake

Mrs. Allan took a mouthful of hers and a most peculiar expression crossed her face; not a word did she say, however, but steadily ate away at it. Marilla saw the expression and hastened to taste the cake.

“Anne Shirley!” she exclaimed, “what on earth did you put into that cake?”  

[ . . . ]

Anne fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle partially filled with a brown liquid and labeled yellowly, “Best Vanilla.”

Marilla took it, uncorked it, smelled it.

“Mercy on us, Anne, you’ve flavored that cake with Anodyne Liniment. I broke the liniment bottle last week and poured what was left into an old empty vanilla bottle. I suppose it’s partly my fault—I should have warned you—but for pity’s sake why couldn’t you have smelled it?” – Ch. 21

The kids will be delighted to learn that this actually happened, in "real life:" The author's landlady once made this sake mistake, and served the cake to a man who enjoyed it--or pretended to!

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We rarely, if ever, hear the word bedizen these days. But isn't it a great one? Kids love putting it to good use and going home with an authentic story souvenir.

INSPIRATION

Charlie Sloane's slate pencil, gorgeously bedizened with striped red and yellow paper, costing two cents where ordinary pencils cost only one, which he sent up to her after dinner hour, met with a more favorable reception. Anne was graciously pleased to accept it and rewarded the donor with a smile which exalted that infatuated youth straightway into the seventh heaven of delight and caused him to make such fearful errors in his dictation that Mr. Phillips kept him in after school to rewrite it. […].  —Ch. 17

SETUP

Read the quote about Charlie Sloane's slate pencil, above, and ask the kids if they can figure out what "bedizen" means from the context. (This activity pairs well with (but doesn't require) the vocabulary worksheet in our printables set, which teaches kids bedizened and three related words, so they can bedizen their language skills.)

Whether you do that worksheet or not, define bedizen for the kids and ask:

• Why would this have been an extra special gift to receive?

• What does it tell us about Charlie's feelings for Anne?

Tell the kids they'll get to try their own hand at bedizening a slate pencil, just as soon as they learn what a slate pencil is and where it came from:

DIRECTIONS

Provide the pencil and materials listed below, and let them go to town (or school, anyway)!  Be prepared for lots of sparkles, surprising color combinations, and impractical placement of doodads. It's all good.

SUPPLIES

• Optional: the vocabulary worksheet in our printables set

• Optional: striped red and yellow bedizening paper like Charlie Sloane's, in our printables set

• pipe cleaners, sequins, ribbons, “jewels,” and other decorative doodads

• glitter

• glue

• pencils: you can bedizen ANY pencil, but for as much authenticity AND novelty as possible, you might want to search online for antique slate pencils. These are very similar to the one described in the book, on Etsy:

• Here's a pencil that only writes on real slate (authentic) and is available through Amazon:

• For more "bedizening" surface area, you might choose carpenter pencils, like this, available at your local hardware store or through Amazon:

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A literary project that makes a great literary gift, based on a literary gift that makes a great project—this little bookmarker packs a lot of meta! t

INSPIRATION

...The next morning a note most fearfully and wonderfully twisted and folded, and a small parcel were passed across to Anne.

“Dear Anne," ran the former, “Mother says I’m not to play with you or talk to you even in school. It isn’t my fault and don’t be cross at me, because I love you as much as ever. I miss you awfully to tell all my secrets to and I don’t like Gertie Pye one bit. I made you one of the new bookmarkers out of red tissue paper. They are awfully fashionable now and only three girls in school know how to make them. When you look at it remember

Your true friend,
Diana Barry

Anne read the note, kissed the bookmark, and dispatched a prompt reply back to the other side of the school.
-Ch. 17

SUPPLIES

• scissors and glue

• 6x6 paper—origami or the floral paper included in our printables set

• friendship/reading quotes, either your own or the quotes in our printables set—we've also included the excerpt, in case you'd like to have the kids mat it as a tag for a literary gift.
  

DIRECTIONS

It's easiest to show the kids our video, below.  

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Young readers might ask how Anne could have made such a dumb mistake—but Anne had a cold, remember? The experience of comparing the two helps kids get into Anne’s (stuffed-up) head, and into her setting, too.  Like Anne, they’ll learn first-hand lessons all through her story, by using — not losing — their senses and imagination.

This activity pairs well with our BookBites activity, "Get a sip and a bite of Anne's mistakes." :)

DIRECTIONS

Pour a good helping (or dose) of of liniment and vanilla extract into old fashioned bottles. Don't label them —let the kids smell each and discover the difference for themselves. The faces they make are half the fun! 

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Anne has NO IDEA how remarkable she already is—let alone how remarkable she''ll be for millions of readers! There are plenty of budding Remarkables among us, and more in already in bloom.

INSPIRATION

I love writing compositions. Mostly Miss Stacy lets us choose our own subjects; but next week we are to write a composition on some remarkable person. It’s hard to choose among so many remarkable people who have lived. Mustn’t it be splendid to be remarkable and have compositions written about you after you’re dead? Oh, I would dearly love to be remarkable.”     —Ch. 24

SETUP & DIRECTIONS

Read the inspiration, above, and tell your kids this is their chance to take on Miss Stacy's assignment, and write about a remarkable person they admire.

Talk about the meaning of the word remarkable, and ask the kids who in their lives stands out for being "uncommon" or "extraordinary."  Invite them to talk about people they know who meet the definition, in positive ways. 

Then have the kids choose a Remarkable Person, and list at least three remarkable qualities.  Ask them to think of things their RP does that prove those qualities.  (This activity pairs well with the characterization handout in our printables set, which is an exercise in "showing not telling" what someone is like.)

Once they've done that, have them write an essay about their Remarkable Person, including examples that reveal that remarkableness.  

When they've finished, invite volunteers to read their compositions aloud.

You might let all your kids know that if they want to give or read their composition to their Remarkable Person, he or she would never forget it.

For older kids, you might ask them to research the author and write about her. (That's her below, in 1935; see our Learning Links for plenty of resources.) After all, it wasn't just Lucy Maud Montgomery’s imagination that gave us Anne; it was her life experiences. The connections between her and Anne are innumerable and intriguing, and the research will help kids see that creating art comes from living life—and that they too could someday share their life in fiction. 

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You can discuss the narrative arc in any of these three ways; we've found the first to be the most engaging, because it breaks up the discussion into bite-size chunks.

1. Introduce the concept of the narrative arc up front, but save the story's scenes to discuss as you go, pausing to "do what the characters did" in fun hands-on ways, while weaving in discussions and other worksheets.

2. OR introduce the concept and complete the worksheet before the activities, so kids have a review of the story fresh in their heads first, and you can remind them "where we are" on the arc as you go.

3. OR at the end of your activities, introduce the concept, then help kids figure out where the different parts of this story fit on it.

The narrative arc worksheet in our printables set summarizes the story by plot point, and has kids fill in some blanks.