The Witches by Roald Dahl book and a movie night.

I don’t know about you, but I read a lot of Roald Dahl books as a child, and the same seems to be true of many movie producers because in the last 20 years his books have been made into tons of movies, and made my Books made into movies night very easy.  The Witches is one I remember reading as a kid and being rather spooked by it, but also laughing at the end results. Future Ticia adds in, I assigned this to the kids in 4th grade, apparently it’s on my 4th grade books made into movies list.

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The Witches by Roald Dahl summary

The Witches* (book) or The Witches* (movie) is about a boy and his grandmother who go on vacation and run into a witches’ meeting.  The boy discovers the witches plan to turn children into mice and have them killed by rat catchers.  He must work with his grandma to stop the witches’ plan.

It’s a little surreal to read about all the terrible things witches do and how a young child is turned into a mouse.  But, it’s also Roald Dahl, so it’s described in such a way you don’t really freak out by it.

I don’t know how he does it.

The Witches projects

My kids all did PSAs to warn other kids of the witches terrible plans.  Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of these, but they were quite hilarious.  We also attempted to make gummies using jello, which didn’t go so well.

The Witches book club

Future Ticia 2024 jumping in, let me give you some pointers to some more formal book clubs and discussions questions you might use. We would have informal discussions as we would read the book at this age, so I don’t have formal questions written down for you. But, from my quick search, here’s what I can suggest:

• The Witches discussion questions
• The Witches questions PDF
• Shoomp The Witches

I realized after my first search, I really should have made sure to include Roald Dahl in my search, because that first search result got some interesting results back. Thankfully most of them were just other books, but wow. Those were some interesting results.

Also, searching up pictures to update this post was interesting. Let’s just say I got a lot of pictures of Halloween costumes.

The Witches snacks

Future Ticia 2024 wants to add in, our Witches snacks was before I started making labels, and so there are no labels in the subscriber section unlike for most other of our book and a movie. Hopefully at some point I’ll add that in, but right now you’ll get to see my kids’ terrible handwriting and spelling.

Part of how the witches planned on transforming all children was poisoning their sweets, so of course we had large numbers of poisoned food.

• Gryphon steak- steak bites marinated in soy sauce
• Butterfly wings- the gummies we attempted to make, but butterfly gummies do exist
• Snake’s tails- shrimp (my daughter had a lot to do with my choice of foods, and she loves steak and shrimp)
• Phoenix eggs- jelly beans
• Worms- gummy worms, because my kids love gummy worms
• Poisoned candy- Hershey’s Nuggets* because Jeff and I needed a candy we liked
• Poisoned cookies- leftover from our dinosaur fossil dig
• Witches’ brew- dry ice, sherbet and Sprite (I’d link to amazon but their price is just ridiculous)

If you enjoy this book and a movie post check out the rest of the series or my Book and Activity pinterest board.

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Some more 4th-grade books to read

• Kiki’s Delivery Service
• Spiderwick Chronicles book club
• How to Train Your Dragon book club
• Matilda book club
• Tale of Despereaux book club