We hosted another fun book club event this week. This time the girls read “The Castle Mystery” which is part of the Boxcar Children series. In this story, the Aldens travel to a friend’s former home, which just happens to be a small castle that’s nestled on a cliff above a lake. They plan to help prepare for a museum to be opened inside the former home. Instead, they arrive to find that a famous violin has gone missing and the other workers mysterious act mysterious. Can they find out who has taken the Stradt and get the castle ready in time for the museum’s opening?
After summarizing the book and sharing our thoughts, we listened to a violin and headed into the kitchen. We turned on some classical music to see if we could pick out the violin parts while we made stained glass window cookies.
The kids were really fabulous about this, and they were so much fun to work with. They had obviously baked before! They took turns reading the recipe and doing each task. First, they unwrapped the hard candy that would act as the ‘stained glass,’ then we went outside to use hammers and rolling pins to crush it.
After mixing up the dough, the kids carefully cut the middle out of each cookie and then filled it with crushed candy.
They ended up looking like this.
We baked them just until the centers melted, then removed them from the oven and let them finish cooling on the tray.
After that we headed to the playroom to make crayon resist stained glass windows. Each child shaped her paper the way she wanted, then colored shapes on it with light and bright colors. After that, she painted the whole paper with black water paint, which really makes the light colors stand out.
After finishing our paper windows, we headed outside to design our own castle. We used the exact same system that we used for our English castles last summer, and the kids had just as much fun with it as they did then. For the rest of the afternoon, they designed and re-designed the layout of the walls over and over. I love that they can be so fascinated with something as simple as cardboard!
We have some really exciting plans for next month. I can’t wait to share them with you!
What are your kids reading right now?
* Shared at I Can Teach My Child.
