Witch's Brew

Here are my organic strawberries. They've been living in my deep freeze for about two years.  In fact they spent much of their time alone......I was saving them for Christmas Vodka.  But it's been a Strawberry Jam kinda year....a little bit sour, a little bit sweet.......

Anyway raspberries are much better for making a Christmas Vodka, so I thought I'd give jam ago.......Have I ever made jam before? The answer must be no!

Get a packet of Jam Sugar from the local supermarket, I use Chelsea.  Just chuck in some frozen strawberries (the amount needed) add blob of butter, and stir on a low heat......Skim the scum off and turn up the heat, then boil for 4 minutes. Test the jam on a cold plate to see if it's set, taste it....oh so nice......What a treat! Package in sterilised jars, decorate and it's all ready for Xmas.

2008 organic strawberry patch pickings

It tasted great so much better than shop bought...

I can see the pips this has got to be good,  the jam is 100% fruit not chemicals!

The 2010 strawberry planst...I had no strawberry patch this year!

Making the Sign

On the day of the fair I found out I was on the back field!  I thought...who will see us back there?  I quickly got the computer and made a sign. I divided up the words, as I wanted to enlarge this on to A3.  Once I'd done this I laminated each A3 sheet, used the craft knife to slice it up and used double-sided tape to stick it all together.  The sign was about 2.5 m in length.

The Bath Bomb Jar

These are seconds there's still plenty of fizz in them though!

Bargain Bombz for sale at the Fair
a lot of baths to be had........

Packaging

I cleaned out my garage of anything that could be useful for packaging. The button jar was emptied of any ribbons. Yes ribbons live in the button jar!  The sewing cupboard, with it's ten year material stash was emptied. Children also brought ribbons to school, and some parents gave material. Now I'm just waiting for my bargain Organza ribbon, ninety one metres for $7.90.

The last of the soapmaking, every scrap of soap was used.

The heat gun blew up when shrink wrapping the children's soap.
I then used a good blow dryer, I wonder if I'll blow that up!

Online auctions are a good place to find packaging

Good idea to have a 2nd box, no soap or packaging is wasted. Children can fossic through
and find a delightful treasure 

Lavender Lionz

There were lions, lions, lions in the garden....
He's a bit of a spotted lion and it was really hard to take photos of the Lavender Lionz, they were not photogenic at all!  I think I'm going to get the children to make them a slightly deeper lavender colour.

This soap had a nice suttle lavender smell

More Soap

Lime & Coconut soap, made with the children

Using classroom resources to package the soaps.
Thanks to the parents who brought along material, ribbons....

Making Soap for the School Fair

Test run, then I'm taking my class through the soapmaking process.

Wrapped and ready to go

Kitty Kat Shake

Sweet like chocolate

Writing Descriptions of Plasticine Models

At the moment my class are writing descriptions.  They modelled plasticine characters and used these to write their descriptions.

I've now started to read out some of the children's descriptions while they sketch the character.  I also do this on the whiteboard too.  Do we end up with the same picture?  What did the writer miss out on telling us?  What did we have to infer?  This is a useful way for children to check they've included enough details to create a picture in the reader's mind.  We've had a few giggles at how children have described the body shapes of their models and missed out physical features.

This process also lends itself to discuss the language they're using in their writing.  We talk about using good nouns and describing words.  For instance, what other nouns could we use instead of saying your character 'wears a top?'

Some plasticine characters

Children's sketches while the description is being read to them

Testing Da Bombz

Trying them out

Da Bombz Fizz!

Wrapped up and Ready to go

Shrink wrapped

Experimenting with packaging

Print a Flyer

Design a Bath bomb and Soap flyer for your stall....even write a poem to lure your customers in to try your smelly wears... :-)

Poem and flyer © The Witchboard Witch

Making Bath Bombs with children

Here's a very handy tip.  Make sure you label your cornflour and baking soda when working with children.  We accidentally tipped in two cups of cornflour, on top of the only citric acid we had left!  Cooking skills came in handy here.  It was a mystery mix, but it worked...they FIZZED and left your skin so soft!

Bath Bomb Recipes

Basic Bath Bomb Recipe 1

1 1/2 cups baking soda
1/2 cup citric acid
2 1/2 teaspoons of oil
8 - 12 drops of food colouring
5 mls of smell
Water or Witch hazel to mist

Sieve baking soda and citric acid.  It's like making muffins.  Add the dry all together. Then mix together the oil, colouring and smells.  Add this to the dry ingredients and mix quickly. Mist with distilled water or witch hazel until you get the correct consistency.

For a step by step guide to bath bombs click here.

Basic Bath Bomb Recipe 2

1 cup baking soda
1/2 cup cornflour
1/2 cup citric acid
2 1/2 tablespoons of Grapeseed oil
1 teaspoon of melted coconut oil
Add you colour and smells
Water or witch hazel to mist


The Recipe I used in the movie below

1 cup baking soda
3/4 cup citric acid
1/4 to 1/2 sea salt and mineral salts mixed
1/2 cup cornflour
1/3 cup powdered milk
2 1/2 tablespoons to 3 of Grapeseed oil
1 teaspoon of essential oils
1/2 teaspoon of colouring
Petals from dried pansies
Water or Witch Hazel to mist

I played around the with the oil and colouring mixtures, like any cook does.  I went by the texture and smell - so sometimes you might need to add more smell or colouring.

Taking Bath Bombs into the classroom

Making bath bombs fits perfectly into both the Science and Technology Curriculum. What a great way for children to develop their own bath bomb recipe - what is the best mixture of sodium bicarbonate and citric acid to make the best fizz? How can this be measured? This would also bring in fair-testing.  I'm sure dropping a bath bomb into a bowl of water and asking 'What happened?' would provoke a lot of classroom discussion. Where did the idea of bath bombs come from?

Statistics can be brought into their learning as well. What is the best smell for making bath bombs? Is this different for girls and boys? They can then work out the total cost to make their bath bombs and the amount they'd have to sell them for to make a profit.

Children can develop designs for packaging and marketing of their bath bombs.

This would be a cool way to hook children into Science!