A Taste of Denmark

In my higher-level small group, we've been reading Number the Stars. It's a fabulous book, though it has some pretty sad parts. We finally finished the book, and I usually have each group do some sort of food that goes along with their reading. For The BFG, we made Frobscottle, and for Holes, we made Miss Katherine's Spiced Peaches, but Number the Stars really didn't mention much food (other than the cheese and bread Annmarie took to her uncle with the special handkerchief).
So, I had the kids research different types of food from Denmark (where Annmarie's family lives). They found all sorts of things, but the tastiest (and easiest) of them was Danishes. I bought 2 packs of these huge, delicious pastries from Costco for super cheap (around $8.00) and cut them into 4 pieces. I let the kiddos decide if they wanted cream cheese or strawberry, and we had a lovely Danish breakfast together while my small group told the rest of the class about the book. They absolutely loved it!

Dream Jars

Today we made Dream Jars in honor of The BFG. I found a super simple recipe for Calm Down Jars on Pinterest. I bought really cheap tubes of glitter glue from Wal-Mart, had the kids bring in an empty jar or bottle (glass or hard plastic works better than the flimsy plastic water bottles), brought in my collection of fine glitter, and bought a box of food coloring. I had the kiddos fill their jars half-way up with warm water in the restrooms. Then, I had them squeeze the whole tube of glitter glue in, close the lid tightly, and shake their jars until there were no chunks left.
After that, we added the fine glitter and food coloring. I also had some gold confetti stars that every student wanted. They shook them again until everything was combined and then added water until it was almost full. (I didn't have them glue their lids on, and it was fine, but for younger students, you may want to hot glue or super glue the lids on to avoid accidents.) The only blooper was when I had a kid waiting in line for his food coloring, so he took his jar off while he waited. All of a sudden, I he shook he jar (with no lid) as hard as he could, covering both him and me in warm glitter water. It was a mess, but we got it all cleaned up.
My students absolutely LOVED making these! They couldn't wait to take them home to show their parents and even asked if they could make more to give as gifts. We shook and watched them all day long. We even gave them crazy names, just like the BFG's trogglehumpers and golden phizzwizards!