Enter the realm of mystery, magic, spells, sorcery, and…smoked paprika. That’s right. Never underestimate the POWER of roast chicory! First, we made herbal amulets. Then we votes with our noses. The burning question? Which spice smells most like dragon’s blood? There was some serious sniffing going on at To Be Continued, our weekly story time for 6-8 year-olds.
We read Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones (Greenwillow Books, 1977). When Cat Chant and his older sister Gwendolen become orphans, Cat is quite happy to settle down quietly in their village. But Gwendolen is set on ruling the world, and writes a mysterious letter to a powerful enchanter named Chrestomanci. To Cat’s surprise (and Gwendolen’s glee), Chrestomanci agrees to adopt the children and raise them in his magnificent castle. However, when Chrestomanci and his constituents fail to fawn over the spoiled Gwendolen, she launches a vengeful campaign to create magical mayhem. Things get even more complicated when Gwendolen departs to a parallel world, dragging her double (a girl named Janet), into Cat’s world. It’s up to Cat and Janet to set right all the problems Gwendolen’s created. But in the process, they uncover Gwendolen’s worst plot yet – one that puts Cat in grave danger.
For the hands-on portion of our program, we made these nifty herbal amulets. You can find instructions for that project here.
But there was an additional olfactory activity! In Charmed Life (and, in fact, all the books in the Chronicles of Chrestomanci series) dragon’s blood is one of the most powerful and dangerous substances in the known worlds. It’s described as having a powerful, distinct, and horrible odor, even when it’s dried into a powder.
So while purchasing the herbs for the amulets, I also bought several strong smelling, reddish-brown spices (it was an interesting shopping day, let me tell you). In the end, I decided on chipotle, roast chicory, smoked paprika, hot cayenne, and sumac. I put each spice in a plastic glass with a label. During the program, the kids sniffed the glasses and voted on which one they thought smelled like dragon’s blood.
There was quite a lot of yelling, laughing, and carrying-on, but in the end, we had our winner…sumac!
If you haven’t read Charmed Life, or anyone of the other books in the Chronicles of Chrestomani series, I can’t recommend them enough. I love how Diana Wynne Jones writes her characters and create her magic. I love her sense of humor and her amazing descriptions. The Pinhoe Egg is a book I re-read annually, because it’s like visiting family. Conrad’s Fate comes in a close second. It’s a bit like Downton Abbey…with magic!
Let’s see. There’s a pig in a house of straw, a pig in a house of sticks, a pig in a house of bricks, and a pig on a sailboat. Wait…what?!? A fourth little pig? On a sailboat?
As time passes, the cotton ball sloooowly unfurls, leaving your pig with a droopy nose. Definitely use a pom-pom.
I drew a Big Bad Wolf on a piece of poster board, and taped him to a piece of 
Finally, the sailboat. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Seriously. A shoe box pulled on a string will work great. I just happen to have this awesome sailboat my Dad made for me.
Originally, it was used at a Treasure Island event. One of the student groups at the event (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment, to be precise) wanted to demonstrate wind power. So I asked my Dad (hi Dad!) if he could build a sailboat that would roll down a table, propelled by a fan. It worked great!
On windy days, we bring the sailboat out of the attic and take it outside. In a brisk breeze, you really have to run to keep up with it!
But back to pigs. Here’s how we played the Ziggy Piggy game. I lined up the three houses and asked the kids to sit down in front of them. Then one kid covered his/her eyes while I hid a sailboat ride ticket inside one of the houses. When I shouted “Go!” and the kid had 10 seconds to find the ticket before the Big Bad Wolf rose from behind the houses. Sometimes I had to slow the count, but in the end, everyone won.
Marissa and I then ushered the kids and their pigs out to the library’s main lobby, where we sat in two groups. Marissa was “Dock 1.” This is where all the pigs gathered. Some distance away, I was “Dock 2,” where all the kids gathered. Between the two docks was the sailboat, rigged up on a loooong string. One by one, Marissa would call out a kid’s name and place his/her pig on the sailboat. The kid would come and stand next to me. Once I confirmed that their pig had a ticket, I would reel in the string, causing the sailboat to whizz over to the kid!
When story time was over, we drew names to see who was going to take the 3 houses home. The winners are the little girls posing at the start of this post. They were super thrilled!
Join this beautiful school of fish with their bright, sparkling scales! These easy-to-make fish were created with poster board and construction paper. Then we grabbed a set of sparkling rainbow scales and had a glittery share-fest. That’s right! You could only stick your scales on other peoples’ fish!
To create puffy lips for your fish, start with an oval of self-adhesive craft foam.
Now for the sharing game…and…duh duh DUH…an EPIC STORY TIME CRAFTING FAIL!
Look at these beautiful glittering scales! I found some sheets of self-adhesive hologram paper at Party City. Marissa painstakingly cut and peeled zillions of scales, and stuck each set on mylar. We tested peeling the scales off the mylar to make sure kids could do it quickly and easily.
No scale stickers meant no sharing game. Refusing to admit defeat, I sent Marissa and Joani over to quickly cut the strips of scales into individual scales. To buy them some cutting time, I whipped a roll of hologram smiley face stickers out of the cabinet.
I asked the kids to line up and, one at a time, tell me something nice that they had done for someone recently. Their good deed earned their fish a smiley face sticker AND a trip to see Marissa and Joani to get a set of scales hot glued onto their fish. Sure, it wasn’t the sharing game, but you still got a sparkly fish in the end.
If I was to do this again, I would definitely do the original sharing game. But I would use metallic dot stickers cut in half to replicate fish scales.
Because I’ve learned my lesson. Peel the stickers off the original paper they come on. Don’t stick them on anything except the final product. Oooooooh yes.Interested in some other sharing and cooperative story times? Try this