Lots and Lots of Coal

Since Froggy is going to visit the grandparents for Christmas I figured she ought to hear some of the traditions. And thanks to Almost Unschoolers I found the perfect way to introduce her coal in your stocking.   I took her ideas full scale and implemented them lock, stock, and barrel. So if you follow her blog please pardon the repetitions.  Here is our version.

We read Lemony Snicket's The Lump of Coal  The story is written from the perspective of the lump of coal.  It is not at all what expected given that I all knew going into the reading was that  "It's the story of finding Christmas "miracles" in strange places, like home and hearth, or in a dumped over bag of barbecue briquette in the backyard."  The story is told with the typical dark twist of the other Lemony Snicket books but it has a marvelously happy ending which inspired Froggy.

So after reading the story we gathered our supplies to make lump of coal crayons. We raided our various collections of crayons for all the black ones we could find.

 We have a plethara of crayons but apparently a serious paucity of black.  Froggy helped me unwrap the ones we could find.

  She needed to pause to test them before putting them in the pan.  I did not have any disposable pie tin so we used a disposable casserole pan instead.

 

  Into the oven they went 250 degree Fahrenheit over for 5-10 minutes, until they were completely melted as per instructions.

Taking them out of the oven and making them into the crayons was a "mommy only" job while Froggy watched.

We made 2 crayons which is perfect.  Froggy immediately tested one out.  They will be part of the holiday gifts for her cousins.

To continue our coal theme, we also made Lump of Coal candies(pictured above).  Benefiting from Almost Unschoolers test run, we used the second recipe. We used almond rather mint because we discovered this season that Froggy is extremely biased against mint.  The taste was good and I love the pumice effect.  My only complaint is that it did not make as much as I had hoped. I will probably make a second batch so we have enough to share.