Book Sharing Monday

Roald Dahl Fun

What a fun day we had! We started our Roald Dahl author study this morning. I thought we could keep at one day, but I realized I was so wrong to think that way. We need at least a week, if not more, to really enjoy his work. I had picked a few of the activities from the Roald Dahl Day website and the first assignment the kids tried was called "Sweet Inspiration". They had to imagine that they were going to invent a candy for Willy Wonka. It could be any type of candy, and they had to choose the ingredients, make up the recipe, and the advertisement for their new product. Andre created Dragon Fire Gum, which is the spiciest gum in the world that will also last forever. It has interesting ingredients such as sand block (I am told by him that dragons use those to sharpen their claws or was it their teeth?), exploding candy bombs, and cinnamon. The gum needs to cook at very high temperature for 2 days...I loved seeing his imagination at work! Adrienne also came up with a great idea. Fairy Paste is her creation, a new candy that cleans teeth and taste like sour apple-watermelon! Her ingredients included fairy dust, cavity-filling caramels, and sour watemelon nerds. I am told I can reveal any more of their secret recipes...We read the Revolting Rhymes and lauged so hard! What a great twist on some of those fairy tales...The last activity for today was based on George's Marvellous Medicine. We had read the book at the beginning of this summer and all loved it. Today I asked the kids to make up their own recipe for a marvellous medicine. It was not to be tested of course, so anything went! Adrienne came up with most of the ingredients in the recipe. She had 24 different items, most coming from the bathroom and the kitchen!You can see the photos from that activity above. Great fun! We also read part of the D is for Dahl book, which is helping us learn more about this creative author.

September 13 is Roald Dahl Day!

We really enjoy reading his stories. Adrienne and I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory during our first year of homeschooling, and we did a study on it as well. I remembered reading it as a child and enjoyed discovering it again with her.
Lately, we have picked up a few more of his titles at the library. We listened to The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar on cd during our last road trip. Andre also has been picking up a few titles and reading them on his own.
I found out by going to Roald Dahl website that September 13 is Roald Dahl Day, and there is a whole website for it, full of free activities to download, printables, etc... Many of these seem to apply more to a classroom, but could be adapted for homeschoolers.
Another discovery, from the website, was the release of the movie version of Fantastic Mr. Fox. Andre was really curious since he had just finished that book!


We will be away on September 13, on vacation, but I am planning on doing some of these activities and reading aloud on September 2, next week. I will try to post about it, and maybe you could share your stories if you do a Roald Dahl Day as well by leaving a comment.