Book Review: My boys loved reading this book! We didn't start this book until after we had already started "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe", which ended up being way too scary for my 3-year-old and he refused to read any more. We had to stop 2/3 of the way through. I let him pick the next book so that he would be excited about reading again, and he picked James and the Giant Peach- most likely because he's a huge fan of insects! If you haven't read this book, it is so much better than the movie version! The characters are more lovable, the adventures more fun! The beginning of the book has some more serious themes- James' parents die at the very beginning and he has to live with his two evil aunts. They treat him very badly, and they are repaid for their horribleness by being killed by a giant rolling peach. These themes might be a little disturbing for sensitive kids, but mostly it's just a fun read and my kiddos enjoyed it.
Book Party
Supplies from your craft kit:
Poster board
Markers
Crayons
black sheet of foam
Orange sheet of foam
white sheet of foam
Brown sheet of foam
Green sheet of foam
dowl
twine
green construction paper
hot glue
scissors
google eyes
pipe cleaners
pom-poms
Supplies from the dollar store:
round glass votive holders
child headbands
ping pong balls
From the craft store:
Green straws
peach colored felt
large roll of batting and a can of peach spray paint OR other peach colored fabric
Supplies from around your house:
child bowling set pins- if available
several large white socks
large brown sock
sunglasses
Food supplies:
Peach nectar or peach juice
donut holes
white chocolate chips
peach sprinkles
peach food coloring (or red and yellow)
peach bread recipe (see below)
Bug Headbands
The Giant Peach
Sometimes it takes me a long time to figure out how make something that I want to include in one of my parties. This was one of those times. How do I make a giant peach?! This was my solution. It doesn't look perfect, but the kids were so excited and just loved it. And that's the point, right? So I started with a dome tent. I didn't have one, so I borrowed one from my brother. I couldn't just spray paint the tent (I'm pretty sure my brother would have been embarrassed next time he went camping in it!) I remembered that I had a giant roll of leftover batting and thought it would be fun to use that to make the peach nice and fuzzy. I unrolled it and spray painted the batting peach. If I didn't have batting already, I probably would have skipped the spray paint and would have just bought a bunch of cheap peach material. I used masking tape to tape the material onto the tent so that I didn't ruin it. I had to patch it up in places because it took more batting than I thought to cover it. When it was covered I topped it with a brown tube that I made out of a sheet of brown foam, and I cut out a giant leaf to put on top. What do you think? Do you have any other (possibly better!) ideas to make a peach?
Centipede GameIn the book, Centipede has James put on his boots for him. It ends up taking James a LONG time, because Centipede has a lot of feet! This game is inspired by that. Using a piece of poster board and a marker, I drew a picture of Centipede from the book. The kids colored him in. Then using a piece of black foam, I cut out a bunch of boots (20 in all!). For the game I put a piece of masking tape on the back of each boot and then each kid got a chance to put all the boots on the centipede! They were "timed," but because most of the kids were little, we just let them put them on and cheered when they were done. For bigger kids you could actually time them, or maybe do tag teams or something similar to make it more challenging. Kids loved it, super easy.
In the book, James and his friends are threatened by sharks as they float along in the ocean. James comes up with a plan to get them out of trouble. Using Spider and Silkworms thread and using Earth Worm as bate, he captures hundreds of seagulls and together they lift the peach up out of the water and fly them to New York. In this game, you're using the worm on the fishing pole to knock over the seagulls. To make the seagulls, I used my kids toy bowling pins and raided my husband sock drawer. I covered them with white ankle socks, cut out and taped on some eyes and a beak and viola! the cutest little seagulls ever! If you don't have bowling pins, I think you could stuff the socks with batting too. For the worm, another one of my husband's socks. This time, a long brown one. I stuffed this one with batting, put some sunglasses on him, and tied him to some twine and a dowl. This was so fun for the kids. They would swing the fishing pole and try to knock down the little seagulls. Jeremy's socks have never been so cute!
So in the book while our heroes are flying through the air on the giant peach, they meet some characters called Cloud Men. They're busy working on making whether to shower down on the earth below. Centipede insults the cloud people and a fight ensues. The Cloud Men begin pelting the peach and it's occupants with snowballs. I was a little worried about the outcome of this game that I thought up, but it ended up being the favorite. It was also the simplest. We made a starting point and ending point on the floor. The kids were lined up along the path and armed with ping pong balls. One kid got to run from the starting point to the end point while the others tried to hit them with a "snow ball". There was no winner or loser, and the ping pong balls were going EVERYWHERE. The kids loved the chaos of it and we played this game several times.
I wanted the kids to eat real peaches, but since it's winter and peaches are nowhere to be found, I turned to my hot glue gun instead. I found these little votive candle holders at the dollar store. I then bought some peach colored flannel. I tried several different ways to attach the flannel without ruining the votive, but with time running out, I had to resort to gluing the felt directly onto the votive with hot glue. It's a little tricky because it's round, and so you have to pucker it at the top and bottom. I think if I were to do it again, I'd paint the outside of the jar with some sort of non toxic paint for a cleaner look. But a lot of these projects are a learning process, and many times they don't turn out exactly as I envision them to. At any rate, these are the finished product. They loosely resemble peaches, don't they? I finished them off with a green straw I found in party supply at target and a little leaf that I cut out of green crate paper and poked the straw through. Then I filled them with peach nectar you can find in a can in the ethnic food isle of your grocery store. Mmmm. Peachy!
I'll admit it. I run out of time sometimes and use short cuts. Sometimes that's what being a mom is all about, right? So instead of making cake balls like I originally intended, I ran out to the store and bought some doughnut holes. The rest was easy. I melted some white chocolate chips I had on hand, mixed in some red and yellow food coloring until it looked peachy, then using a skewer, I dipped the holes into the white chocolate and layed on wax paper. I sprinkled on some peach sprinkles before it dried, cut some extra straws and stuck them in so they'd look like mini peaches. This project took maybe 10 minutes!
Yummy Peach Pound Cake
This peach bread is good anytime! I made a glaze to go over top which gave it a little extra yum!
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
3 cups peaches, chopped small- if using canned peaches, drain well and save juice
Glaze:
3/4 C sugar
2 Tbl butter
1/4 C reserved peach juice
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter 2 bread loaf pans and coat with white sugar
2. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until white and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating with each addition. Then stir in vanilla. reserve 1/4 C of flour for later, and sift together the remaining flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Gradually stir into the creamed mixture. Use the reserved flour to coat the chopped peaches, then fold in the floured peaches into the batter. Spread evenly into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for 60-70 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.
4. Meanwhile, to make glaze, melt all ingredients together on top of stove or in the microwave. After loaves have cooled for 10 minutes, spoon glaze over loaves and allow to cool completely.
So cute, Jeni, you are a genius :)
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