Wintry Chocolate Covered Pretzels

I made these wintry pretzel treats as a special after school snack today.  I melted chocolate chips in the microwave and then spooned the chocolate over pretzel rods.  Then I added mini chocolate chips, nonpareils, snowflake sprinkles, or blue candy melt drizzle to each of the pretzels.

They remind me of one of our favorite winter books, Here Comes Jack Frost by Kazuno Kohara.

The main character is a young boy who is lonely because all of his friends are hibernating.  Just when he thinks that he hates winter, Jack Frost appears and they have a great time playing in the snow and ice.  Jack Frost warns the boy that he must never mention anything warm in his presence or Jack will have to leave.  I'll let you read the book to find out what happens!

Jello Art

We love the illustrations in Here Comes Jack Frost by Kazuno Kohara.  The book is about a young boy who discovers the joy of winter when he receives a magical visit from Jack Frost.

I think this book is the perfect inspiration for wintry art and wondered if we could use oil pastel crayons and Jello to make resist paintings, so we tried it.  I mixed a tablespoon of blue Jello powder with a tablespoon of water.

The kids used white oil pastel crayons to draw wintry scenes and then painted over them with the Jello mixture.

It didn't really work, so we went to plan B.  We have made Jello stickers before and I thought we could combine that technique with some drawing, and use one of the Jello painted papers as a background.

I cut one of the dried Jello painted pages in half and gave one half to each of the kids.  They drew snowmen on the unpainted side and I cut out a tree.  Then, they cut out the snowmen, licked the dried Jello side and stuck them onto the other Jello painted paper.  The dried Jello painting has an icy blue look that is perfect to go along with this book.

Of course, we used the rest of the Jello powder to make our snack!

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