Book Club Fun!

What can you make with these ingredients? 

 

 

Freckle Juice!

 

Our book club is up and running again and we had a super fun meeting this week based on the classic book Freckle Juice by Judy Blume.

 

 

We had a special guest at this meeting.... my nephew Carter! (He spent a few days with us while his school was closed for teacher inservice days.)

 

We always begin our meetings by sharing books we've been reading.

 

At this meeting we played a fun game to see how well the boys remembered the details of Freckle Juice. I asked questions and they wrote down their answers on white boards. For each correct answer, the boys received a blue "freckle" (sticker).

All of the boys LOVED this book... and they did really well with the questions!

We had a freckle epidemic!!!

Meanwhile, on the front porch.... the girls book club read about St. Francis and made pine cone bird feeders!

Our next Freckle Juice activity was a "secret juice tasting" game. Each boy got to choose two cups of "mystery juice" and try to guess which kinds of juice they were drinking.

 

Next, we followed the recipe in the book and made our own batch of freckle juice. (In the book, the main character really wants freckles. A precocious classmate sells him a secret recipe for freckle juice. The boy makes the juice, drinks it,  and gets really sick while not growing a single freckle.)

 

This is what our batch of freckle juice looked like.... Be GLAD you can't smell it. It was really repulsive!

 

Almost all of the boys actually tasted the stuff! I gave them each a tiny amount of freckle juice in one cup and some water in another cup. I made them go outside to drink it (in case they spit it out).

The consensus was ---- the stuff is yucky... and it does not make freckles grow.

Here's our newest book club friend..... Baby Bella! She was right in on all the action! (Congrats to our friends on their new bundle of joy!)

The girls refused to miss out on trying the freckle juice!

 

For their final activity, the boys worked in pairs to create their own recipes for potions that would have magical results. They had to write the purpose of the recipe, the ingredients and amounts, and the directions for how to make it and how much to drink. They took it so seriously and worked together really well.

 

Notice our little monkey with the armpit stitches.
Why must he be standing on the chair during this activity?????

My friend Becky was without a doubt the most brave and adventurous person of the day. She actually tasted the freckle juice AND each of the potions. She was our judge. She chose one potion that was the least disgusting. They used the strategy of only using sweet ingredients. One participant was actually upset that his concoction did not taste delicious. ;) I was just happy that nobody got sick (as far as I know... haven't heard from Becky though).

 

This was actually our third book club meeting of this school year. We are putting an emphasis on poetry this year.... reading and writing a variety of forms of poems. We are planning to compile poetry books for the boys with all of their projects from the year.

 

We read and recited poems from this fun book ----

 

We read this end-of-summer story and wrote acrostic poems about summer ---

 

We've also written cinquain poems about each other and "all about me" poems about ourselves. We've got so many fun books and projects planned for the rest of the year. I just love seeing these friends have fun learning together.

Adam and Ray have finally reached the point where they are truly enjoying reading. Adam actually read Freckle Juice all by himself -- his first chapter book. If I can instill the love of reading in these boys, I'll consider my schooling efforts a success!