Roald Dahl’s Matilda is a classic children’s novel about Matilda Wormwood, a bright young girl whose parents are not so kind to her, and her antics at a school 🏫run by the tyrannical Miss Trunchbull.
I grew up with Roald Dahl’s books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, The Witches, and The Twits.
Like most of Roald Dahl’s children’s books, Matilda is an iconic book with a good message for children. The book deals with the issue of child abuse suitably for children. If you haven’t read this book to your kids, then I highly recommend doing so because it is filled with great lessons for them.
Interested Matilda Activities for Children
Matilda is a popular children’s novel 📕that is funny yet introspective. The story focuses on a young girl who shows children that being kind to everyone is our greatest virtue. The undermentioned activities are targeted towards testing your child’s comprehension skills, along with their observational and artistic skills.
Matilda Inspired Crossword
It is important to determine whether your child is able to comprehend the story they are reading. One of the ways you can test your child’s comprehension is by making them a crossword.
You can also download a Matilda-themed crossword from the internet. If you are going to make your crossword, then I recommend designing it to fit your child’s aptitude.
Include popular characters and the made-up words by Roald Dahl in the crossword 🧩to make it more interesting.
Draw Matilda
Encourage your child to draw 🖼️ Matilda or an illustration from the book. You can also give your child a prompt like drawing Matilda being mischievous or playing with a dog.
Activities like this can improve your child’s drawing skills and foster creativity and imagination.
Matilda Fractions Activity
Improve your child’s mathematics skills with this maths activity that focuses on the topic of fractions.
What you need-
A compass, ruler, cardboard, pencil, marker, and scissors ✂️.
Steps-
- Extend the compass to its largest setting and draw a circle on the cardboard.
- Cut the circle out of the cardboard.
- Use a ruler to divide the circle into eight sections. Now, cut the circle 🛞into these eight sections.
In Matilda, Bruce Bogtrotter was forced to eat a whole cake. The cardboard is the cake, and the sections are the cake slices. All the cake slices are put together to make the whole cake.
As you remove one slice and then another, ask your child to express how much cake has been eaten and how much cake is still left in fractions.
Throw a Hammer Like Miss Trunchbull
In Matilda, it was revealed that Miss Trunchbull participated in the Olympics 🏃. It might not seem like an important skill, but throwing is extremely beneficial for children as it improves their hand-eye coordination, builds strength and muscles, and improves their aim.
To do this activity, collect a bunch of light and heavy unbreakable items that your kids can throw at a target, like inside a bucket.
Make the Infamous Chocolate Cake from Matilda
This chocolate brownie cake is a great way to include your kids in a baking project, as it is straightforward to follow.
What you need-
Cocoa powder, plain flour, eggs, plain chocolate 🍫, caster sugar, baking powder, vanilla extract, golden syrup, light brown sugar, and butter.
Steps-
- Grease an 8-inch cake 🎂pan and line its bottom with parchment paper. Also, preheat the oven to 360 degrees Fahrenheit at the fan setting.
- Heat 100 grams of butter 🧈, 125 grams of caster sugar, 75 grams of brown sugar, one tablespoon of golden syrup, and 125 grams of plain chocolate in a saucepan. Melt everything until it appears smooth and lump-free.
- Heat and cool down while the pan is off; in a bowl, crack two eggs 🥚and mix them with one teaspoon of vanilla extract, half a teaspoon of baking powder, 100 grams of plain flour, and two tablespoons of cocoa powder.
- Mix thoroughly and then add the butter mixture.
- Fill the cake pan with this mixture and bake for at least 30 minutes. Let it cool down for an hour before serving. You can serve it with ice cream 🍦, whipped cream, or fresh fruit.
Since this recipe doesn’t require a stand mixer or a whisk, it is perfect for children to follow.
Roald Dahl Made Up Word Finding Competition
Roald Dahl was a big fan of making up new words. His book Matilda is filled with these made-up words 🔤.
Create your own Matilda word grid or download one from the internet and ask your child to find it. The kid who can find all of the words the fastest wins.
Geniuses Throughout History
Miss Honey, Matilda’s teacher, takes a special interest in Matilda and eventually even adopts her.
If you can recall, in the books, Miss Honey calls Matilda a ‘genius.’ Help your children understand the meaning of this word by exploring real-life people who were also revered and called geniuses.
For instance, Albert Einstein was and still is referred to as a genius for his contributions to physics. Similarly, because of their composition, Mozart and Bach are considered musical 🎹 geniuses.
Matilda Reenactment
Roald Dahl’s Matilda has been adapted into a popular movie and musical 🎶. If your kids are massive fans of these adaptations, then you can ask them to reenact their favorite scenes or musical numbers from the movies.
My children loved Matilda the Musical.
So, one night, when they were particularly over-active, I asked them to perform their favorite song, which was the School Song.
Reenactment and acting exercises are highly beneficial for young children as they encourage teamwork, strengthen verbal communication, and build confidence.
Learn Multiplication with Matilda
In the book, Miss Honey asks her students to learn the table of 2. Use this storyline to motivate your children to learn the table of 2, 3, 4, and other numbers.
Help your children understand the pattern within the multiplications ✖️ table and even challenge them to come up with a trick to understand the table.
Watch the Movies
Strengthen your child’s analytical and critical thinking skills by asking them to watch the film 🎥 adaptations of the book ‘Matilda’ and comparing them with the story told in the books.
I asked my children to make a list of at least ten things that were in the books but not included in the movies. Exercises like these aim to challenge your child’s observational and comprehension skills.
Make Your Own Mnemonic Device
A mnemonic device is a memory aid that is used by people to remember large pieces of information. For instance, My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos is a popular mnemonic device used by teachers to help children remember the placement of planets 🪐.
Similarly, in Matilda, the character Nigel learns how to spell the word ‘difficulty’ by making up a mnemonic device.
Encourage your kids to make up their own mnemonic devices that can help spell complicated words. Start with short words and then increase the number of letters. This enjoyable exercise can be played with two or more children.
Make a Wanted Poster
Roald Dahl’s Matilda is filled with iconic yet villainous characters that are awful towards the children in the books.
Ask your child to select any of these villains and encourage them to create a wanted poster with a portrait of the character, reward money 💸, and character description.
Write a Character Profile on Matilda and other Supporting Characters
Encouraging children to write a character profile is a great way to understand what they are inferring from a text, a movie, a poem, or a song 🎙️.
Once they have finished writing their character profile, you can explore what they wrote with questions about how they developed their perception. Matilda is an excellent book to perform this activity with because it is filled with strong characters.
New Word Challenge
Readers of Roald Dahl’s children’s books are aware that the author had an affinity towards making up new words.
Some of the words and terms, like a scrumdiddlyumptious and witching 🧙 hour, created by Dahl, have become a part of our speech to the extent that they have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Challenge your kids to make up new words along with their definitions.
Write a Limerick
A limerick is a five-line, humorous poem where the first, second, and fifth lines must contain the same rhyme, and then the third and fourth must follow another.
On her very first day at school, Matilda impresses her teacher, Miss Honey, by reciting a limerick. Discuss a limerick’s rhyming scheme and humor with your child, and then ask them to write one themselves.
Write an Essay on their Favorite Character
Encourage your kids to write an essay describing their favorite character from Roald Dahl’s Matilda. Encourage them to write about how their character differs from Matilda, any lesson they learned from this character, and what their favorite line was spoken by that character.
I also asked my children to draw a portrait 🗿 of their favorite character.
Describe Matilda
Instruct your child to make a list of ten adjectives to describe characters from Roald Dahl’s Matilda.
This activity aims to improve your child’s vocabulary while testing their comprehension skills.
Conclusion
Reading Matilda 📕to my kids was a lot of fun. They adored the feisty character of Matilda and found Quentin Blake’s illustrations very funny.
This book is an exceptional tool to work on your child’s reading and comprehension skills whilst simultaneously fostering their creative side. Let us know in the comments below if your children enjoyed participating in any of these activities.
I’m a former teacher (and mother of Two Childs) with a background in child development. Here to help you with play-based learning activities for kids. ( Check my Next startup Cledemy.Com)