Friday, September 4, 2009

Roxaboxen Candy

Youngest son and I just finished rowing Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran and beautifully illustrated by Barbara Cooney.
This is a delightful, imagination probing book about the playful young days of children in Arizona.
This book is filled with wonderful learning experiences.
Our go alongs for this unit included:
My Great-Aunt Arizona by Gloria Houston
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter by Joseph Parramon
Cactus Hotel by Brenda Z. Guiberson
Night of the Moonjellies by Mark Shasta
Draw, Write, Now Book 3
Evan Moore's Giant Resource Book
and of course the wonderful packed Five In A Row Volume 4.
There are many online resources for this book found here.
If you are not familiar with Five In A Row, it is a fantastic unit study curriculum that is built around great children's literature.
For fun, youngest son, who is in 3rd grade this year, made this candy that looks like glass, of course with mom helping. I would recommend that you read the book to find out the 'treasure' in the candy.
This picture does not truly do it justice.


And here is my little lad, after all had been cleaned up. What a lesson. He learned how to use a candy thermometer and some patience along the way, takes a long time to get to 310 degrees.
Here is the recipe we used.

Roxaboxen Candy

1 cup of hot water, place this in a large stainless steel pan on medium heat
add
3 1/2 cups sugar and
1 1/2 cups light corn syrup

Stir ingredients raising the temperature a little bit at a time til you get to high (on my stove at least). Insert your thermometer and let it boil until it gets to 310 degrees. At that time remove from heat and add
1 tablespoon liquid food coloring (we used blue and red) and
1 tablespoon liquid extract (we used strawberry and coconut)
Pour onto a Pam sprayed 12x18 cookie sheet with edges. Let sit for about 10 minutes then refrigerate for about an hour. Break apart and eat. Just a note, this makes a huge amount of hard candy. Make sure to have some church friends of neighbors to give it away to.

Days like this are a blessing. I am thankful to have the ability to do activities like this with my children.

Blessings for a wonderful day, Suzie



2 comments:

sojourner2earth said...

Wow? Vol 4? :o)
I loved the first 3 and our favorite books were: The Rag Coat and The Story About Ping. :o)
Hugs!

Shonya said...

Looks like lots of fun!! We had fun with Roxaboxen a few years ago, too!! My older kids (13 and 12) still talk about it every once in awhile. Came by from the church of Christ hs egroup and want you to know we are praying for your situation. We have two children biologically and have adopted two more (and nearly have our home study complete to hopefully be blessed by adopting again!)