Cereal box book report of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: 4th Grade book report

When my son read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and loved it, I was inspired to have him write a book report on Roald Dahl’s beloved tale about a young boy’s fantastic adventures inside wacky chocolatier Willy Wonka’s wonderful chocolate factory.

Having written a straightforward book report in third grade, Motito was willing to flex his creative muscle for his first book report for the fourth grade. Not that there’s much creative muscle to flex. Mother and son are both artistically challenged. So naturally I wanted a book report alternative that was creative and easy to do.  Because if a project took more than three days to make and required inventive uses of construction paper, chances are I’d end up doing 70 percent of the work.

I’d come across cereal box book reports while Googling fresh ideas for book reports a while back. We happened to have a nearly empty box of cereal in the cupboard. As soon as I found a home for the newly displaced bag of Froot Loops, we got to work on Motito’s cereal box book report.

First, I downloaded and printed this Cereal Box Book Report template (it’s a PDF file).  The template has instructions for doing the project. Next, we covered the outside of the cereal box with Manila paper.  Then it was time to fill in the “labels” that were going to be cut and pasted on the sides of the cereal box. The “labels” were the different parts of the book report: the setting, main characters, and summary of the book.

Next Motito drew the art for the front of his cereal box book report. He had to come up with a name for his cereal. The instructions recommend that the cereal art and name be related to the book. After deciding on Willy Wonka’s Choco Loops, he made quick work of the task using a pencil and gel crayons.

A regular cereal box usually has some puzzle, maze or game on the back, and this cereal box book report was no different. Motito searched for a simple maze on Google and used it for his box. I helped him with cutting and gluing his cereal box art and title on construction paper (to give them some “lift”) before finally pasting them on the cereal box.

Now that wasn’t too hard! We had so much fun with the cereal box book report that I’ve already picked out another fresh idea for his next book report.