I have very distinct memories of watching the Disney animated Wind in the Willows movie as a kid. I also remember riding Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride when I went to Disneyland as a kid. However, I’d never read Wind in the Willows as a kid, and it always seemed somewhat wrong I hadn’t done so. Of course one of the benefits of being the parent is you can make your kids do things you never did as a kid. We all sat down and read Wind in the Willows together and then sat down for our next book and a movie night. This time was especially exciting because we had guests who had never had this experience before.
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Wind in the Willows
Mr. Toad always has a new hair-brained scheme to try out. His friends, Mole, Badger, and Ratty are constantly trying to keep him from killing himself in some ill-conceived plan. Through it all, they grow as friends and we get a fun look into a different world.
Wind in the Willows makes for a fun read-aloud for third grade, and it has some amazing vocabulary words and great descriptive passages.
Wind in the Willows movie night snacks
The kids came up with so many fun ideas for snacks, there was an overwhelming amount of food. As I mentioned earlier we had friends over, and they were totally in awe of this idea, and especially loved the fog we made. We started off watching the claymation movie, but it was very slow moving, and with six kids in the house, one being a very hyper five year old, we switched over to the animated Disney movie (I was lucky the library had both). That went over much better.
washing tubs- brownie bites with blue frosting on them (rather like the cauldrons from Harry Potter)
Mr. Toad’s broken cars- nutter butters with cookie wheels
willow trees- Batman was learning how to make lady fingers at the time, so he piped out a vaguely willow tree shape
Mr. Toad- frog crackers, sort of like goldfish
fish- we had both Swedish fish and some tilapia (in our classic quick fish meal)
chips- it’s such a British book, we had to have British chips, which greatly amused my kids to have french fries
fishing poles- pretzel rods with licorice whips tied around them
fog- dry ice in some sprite
Some more books made into movies for you to read
The Wind in the Willows is my husband’s favorite children’s book.
How fun! It’s a very different style book from what is written now.
I just love your “a book and a movie” series. Such a great idea, and it just keeps going, even with kids being older…
I do too, and now that the kids are older they are giving me lots of input into snack suggestions and helping me pick books. We just finished a three part book and a movie where each kid picked a book and gave us a summary of how the movie did. That was a really fun way to do it, and I’ve been having some great discussions with the boys because they picked books/movies that have a lot of depth to them (Princess picked 101 Dalmations, which is fun, but doesn’t have the discussion potential that The Giver or Old Yeller has, but I can’t blame her picking that one).