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Tuesday, September 22, 2015

The Chocolate Touch Novel Study

I recently did a novel study with the book, "The Chocolate Touch" by Patrick Skene Catling.  You can find the book here.  It's a story that is similar to King Midas' popular tale.  John Midas only thinks about chocolate which is worrying his parents and causing him to loose friends.  He finds a coin with his initials on it and comes to a new candy story in town.  Instead of giving the coin to a friend that collects coins, he decides to spend it on a whole box of chocolates.  He goes home to find only one piece of chocolate in the box and soon finds out the magic of that piece of chocolate.  It has caused everything that touches his mouth to turn into chocolate.  At first he loves this new gift until he turns his trumpet into chocolate, his pencil during a test, and eventually his mother.  John learns a valuable lesson that he lose the things he loves from his selfish actions.  In the end, he goes back to the magic candy store and gets his chocolate touch turned back, he's a normal boy once again.
We made chocolate playdough to go with, "The Chocolate Touch".    I added the boiling water.  I actually just put really hot microwave water and it worked fine.I used about a 1/2 cup more flour than the recipe calls for and more for the counter.  It stays warm for quite a while.  You will either need to let it dry out some or make sure you put a little flour in the baggie otherwise it will be gooey in the bag they take home.  
  I will tell you everyone that went by my classroom either stopped to watch what we were doing or stopped in.  It made my classroom smell wonderful!  The kids were saying how they were getting hungry for chocolate smelling the playdough.
I gave them each about 1/2, maybe a little more in their baggie. 

   
I saw this idea on Pinterest.  No one seemed to know the source of the idea.  I searched the web and couldn't find the source either.  We summarized the parts of the story and made Hershey's Kiss mobiles.  They will look really great hanging up in our classroom!
I made templates out of tag board for the kids to trace around.  The also used tag board for their kisses.  It stands up better and easier to wrap the foil around.  We used heavy duty aluminum foil.  I wouldn't use regular foil, it rips too easily.
I demonstrated how to wrap the foil around the base then cut a 1 inch line around the kiss and fold it over.  We went ahead and cut foil to fit the back too since they will be hanging and moving around.  
The kids are working on their book summaries.
Bookmarks I printed for the kids that are free on Teachers Pay Teachers

We used the pamplet in this novel study.  The kids really enjoy going through it chapter by chapter.

Trifold from the Teachers Pay Teachers novel study 
This unit has a lot of skill work that can be taught with the novel.  It was great practice for each skill.  I really liked how this one compared King Midas and John Midas.  

I searched for several versions of King Midas and they really weren't age appropriate because they talked about his love for women.  I found this muppet version and the kids really enjoyed it.  I played it after we had read the book.  They hadn't heard the story before and wondered how this could be similar to, "The Chocolate Touch".  After the video we compared the two stories using a Vinn Diagram of both characters.  




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