We just finished reading Roald Dahl's BFG over here, and I wanted to come up with something fun to go along with the book. I saw these cute little juice bottles in the store, and something just clicked...I would make Dream Bottles. I made 3, and only 2 are true to what is really described in the book, but the third was fun too.
The first one I made was our trogglehumper (nightmare). I used water with a bit of glycerin then added some red food coloring and silver glitter with some star confetti. The book talks about how violently this dream moves when caught, and if shook the contents of this bottle can move quite violently like a snow globe.
The second one is our golden phizzwizard (best dream). Here I used the girls apple scented shampoo with just a bit of water, so it would move a little. Then I added the same silver glitter and stars. This resulted in a very calm bottle where the glitter and stars take a great deal of time to settle to the bottom.
Our third dream bottle was just for fun. maybe it was similar to what would have happened when the Big Friendly Giant mixed up all the dreams. It included water with blue food coloring a layer of oil and the same glitter and stars. The glitter stayed in the oil layer, and when this bottle is shook it travels back to the top in oily bubbles. Fun to play with; hard to photograph.
I showed them to the girls, and Nadia's initial reaction was to put on a pouty face and say, "I already have a calm down jar!" (If only the calm down jar worked for her; she just throws it instead of looking at it). I explained the bottles to them, and then they got busy shaking.
In fact they played with them on and off most of the day. Pretending to sleep and giving each other dreams. They made them all into good dreams though mostly about becoming fairies which resulted in the dream giver placing fairy wings on the sleeping child.
To be honest I was a little concerned with the girls being frightened by this book, but after the first part, once they realized Sophie would not be eaten, they were fine. In the end they told me "I like the Queen, and Sophie and the Friendly Giant, but not those other Giants that eat people!"
