Freckle Juice

tiffani
Summary:

In this Judy Blume classic, Andrew decides that he wants freckles and one of his classmates sells him a gross recipe for freckle juice. He tries it -- but doesn't exactly grow freckles.  Read the book to learn how Andrew learns to get over his yearning for freckles!

Themes:
being a little boy, scams, recipes, appearance.
Audience:
Freckle Juice is a proper chapter book, so it's a great transition book for advancing readers. But, it still has some pictures, and it is quite short. It has boy and girl characters and kids of all kinds tend to enjoy it. We find it works well with students in grades 2-5.
Teaching Activities:

We like to make freckle juice!

This book may take a couple of days. On the day you want to do the activity, you want to push to get to page 28… that’s where the recipe is!

1) Read (popcorn style).

  • Discuss.
  • Ask questions. What role to freckles play in Andrew’s life… this isn’t just about spots, is it?
  • What’s going on.
  • Pull out vocab.
  • Call on kids to define words and put words on the board.

2) Take a break after the first chapter to answer some questions and see how the kids are doing at listening and processing the story.

3) Chapter 2 – you might split up and have some kids read silently and have the ones who do not read as well read together.  If you have kids read silently, please make sure that they answer the questions as well.  This is how we know if they are actually reading and actually getting it.

4) Come back together for Chapter 3. This is the fun part. 

  • If you have time, finish chapter 3.
  • If you don’t have time, just get to the recipe and do the project.  I’d say spend about 30 minutes on the activity.  It’s not really worth more than that.

5) Discuss what a recipe is.  

  • When do you use a recipe?
  • What makes a good recipe?
  • What should every recipe have?
  • Let’s try to do this recipe.
  1. On the board, note the problems with the recipe…  (e.g., no amounts)
  2. Each kid gets a vial.
  3. Put the materials out on the table.
  4. The kids will have to take turns putting their materials in their container.  There are droppers for the vinegar and olive oil.   The rest should be pretty easy to parse out. Hopefully the plastic knives will cut the lemons enough to squeeze them and cut off some pieces of onion.
  5. Have them describe the look and smell of their concoctions.  Use as many good descriptive words as possible:
  • How do their descriptions compare to Andrews.
  • Are there concoctions all the same?  Why or why not? Are the exactly the same as Andrew’s?  Why or why not.
  1. If they want to try it, it shouldn’t kill them (though warn them that they better not puke on the floor or they are cleaning it up!).

 

6) I’d save the rest of the book for the next meeting (unless you have a ton of time left).  There are chapter 3 questions to answer, crosswords, and wordsearches (or play vocab wars) if you have just a little bit of time left.

Reading Level: