shoofly pie?

Our first Nursery Rhyme this new school year was Baby and I. After the children had learned it, we spent some time talking about the rhyme. One of the questions I asked was "What kind of pie?" And I have to admit, the children just sat there and looked at me. Crickets, I tell ya! Chirp.....chirp...chirp...so I asked again and added "Apple pie? Chicken pot pie? Shoo fly pie?" and with that they all piped up "Shoo fly pie!" After much discussion, we decided to make "shoo fly pie" but not the traditional kind, our kind.

Upon discussion. The children decided that shoo fly pie had peanut butter, apples, bananas, chocolate chips, and powdered sugar in it...and so we made shoo fly pie!

The children cut and chopped bananas and apples. One of our parents helped us caramelize them in our tiny electric skillet. As the caramelization magic was happening the children took turns adding peanut butter to our graham cracker crust.

Next we added the sticky hot fruit and sprinkled chocolate chips over the glorious goo!  With a flip of their wrists, the children dusted the top of the pie with powdered sugar. Skills they learned included safely using a real butter knife to cut fruit, cleaning up their work stations, respecting the heat of the skillet, using pinching fingers to drop chocolate chips onto the pie, and how to slowly dust the whole shebang with sugar. They also learned a lot of new words...

Not to mention we made an awesome pie! It may have looked like a hot mess but good golly, did we eat every last bite and by we, I mean ALL of us...parents, kiddos, and teachers! We love cooking in our classroom!

baking rainbow {cup}cakes with kids

One of our favorite activities from rainbow week was baking rainbow cakes! The children love cooking and/or preparing food in our classroom so I try to arrange something a couple times a month. Baking rainbow cakes came about after a lively reading of Bunny Cakes. The children decided we should bake a cake, knowing the following week would be our rainbow week, I asked if they would like to bake rainbow cakes. The cheer was affirmative and so I planned.

For this activity we used a box mix. The children all sat together at our main activity table while we discussed the ingredients used in cake-making. Some of the children remembered that Ruby used milk and eggs to bake Grandma's cake and so I showed them the eggs I had brought and talked about the niftiness that is a cake mix. We sat at our tables and reviewed ingredients before I began mixing. The children took turns passing the bowl of dry cake mix around for a whiff. They were quite excited.

After I had mixed the batter up, we portioned out the batter into some white classroom bowls purchased from the discount store. I prefer to use real dishes as opposed to disposable when we can. The children took turns picking out one of the colors from the rainbow, with the last two colors being happily claimed by the last two children (we had six that day so it worked out perfectly!) They quickly got to mixing. I forgot our wooden spoons so plastic it was, drats!

When we bake in our classroom we use our Baby Cakes cupcake maker. I found it at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for $5 after a big sale and some coupon magic! The maker does not heat up until you plug it in and there are eight mini cupcake wells inside. We have used it for cupcakes, muffins, and pie. I love it! The children waited patiently for their turn to drip, drip, drip a rainbow of batter into their cup. I made a quick diagram of whose cupcake was whose on a piece of scratch paper.

After 10 minutes the cupcakes were done! The cupcake maker does get hot so make sure there is an adult near it at all times or that it is tucked away from anxious little hands. The first batch of cupakes were gently scooped out with a silicone spatula and placed on a place in the order they baked and set aside to cool. The remaining batter (there was a lot of batter, I wonder if I could hack the recipe on the box with one scoop of cake mix) was scooped in by the teachers and enjoyed after class.

 
The children were presented with their very own mini cupcake on a plate with a dollop of whipped cream and a smattering of sprinkles. Had we had more time, we would have made the whipped cream in class but we were pushing it.

The verdict? Delicious!

tea tasting in the classroom

 We spent a day investigating tea. There was tea scented play dough, tea painting, tea blending, and tea tasting...herbal of course. It was such a treat for the kiddos to explore tea this way. I do believe this was my favorite theme to set up.

We sampled three kinds of herbal tea and talked about them before brewing. The children learned new vocabulary as we discussed teas, tisanes, flowers, buds, etc. We sampled a globe amaranth with a little bit of sugar for sweetening, chrysanthemum tea, and eight treasures tea (which includes waaaaay too many pieces of rock candy/sugar. I removed all but 1 for brewing). I used a couple of small tea pots like this only smaller and less expensive (I picked them up from World Market but htey no longer carry them) and we sampled our tea from sake mugs which are perfectly sized (and priced) for wee hands. The children were quite solemn as they sampled the tea. Their favorite to look at was the globe amaranth. Their favorite to drink was the chrysanthemum though not a drop was left from each flavor. They even asked for seconds. The teas were brewed at the required temperatures but sampled after a bit of cooling so as not to cause any burning. This was so much fun! Have yo uever sampled tea in your classroom?

diy coconut milk and chia seed pudding {with kids}

This super easy and surprisingly tasty treat was one of our recipes last year. We whipped up our pudding to go along with our week of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. The children always love a recipe!

 Four our recipe we mostly followed this one. Each kiddo measured and poured 1/3 cup of coconut milk into our mixing bowl (I found this collapsible silicone bowl at Daiso. It is awesome), 1 tablespoon of chia seeds, and a big old squirt of honey. They each took turns stirring the mixture up and then used the tablespoon to scoop a portion into a 4 oz jelly jar that they could take home once the pudding set.

Two of the kiddos slurped it all up before we could get the lids on. I suppose they liked it! I was pleasantly surprised over the flavor and texture. I expected it would be more tapioca-like but it wasn't. I think that may be because our ration was more milk heavy than seed heavy. Either way, this is a super easy recipe for kiddos to make and is a great pairing with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!

making smoothies in the classroom

One of our activities for our week of The Very Hungry Caterpillar was to make fruit smoothies. The children were very excited at the idea and talked a lot about when we were going to do it.

On smoothie day, each kiddo brought a piece/type of fruit to class. I notified parents ahead of time and asked them to not bring bananas as I worried that each kiddo would bring a banana, I would supply those.  I also brought along a few other types of fruit that I thought would be fun to explore. We did not stick with the fruit from the book as I wanted the children to decide which fruit they brought to class. We had strawberries, blackberries, apples, peaches, plums, oranges, apricots, and kiwis. A cornucopia! Thank goodness we have no fruit allergies in this class!  The children were very excited to get started as they were going to cut their own fruit with real  (butter) knives! Each piece of fruit was introduced and we talked about the visual characteristics. I talk a lot about us being detectives of the world and how we use our five senses to seek out clues. We used our eyes to give us visual clues to determine what kind of fruit we had. We see an orange is round and of course orange. We then use our nose to smell the fruit before we cut it, we use our hands to touch and then we use our mouth to taste, etc. Some of the fruit was new to the children and we would guess what color the inside was and write down our predictions. There was a lot of excitement, vocabulary, community, etc.

I found this really awesome blender at Target for $15. It makes a 16oz drink and you can drink from the base if ya like. It is not a very loud blender but still loud enough to unsettle my sound sensitive student so before using it we talked about the sound a blender makes and she took some time to decide if she wanted to be in the kitchen with ears covered our in the reasing corner with pillows piled over her, etc. We put in our fruit with a few ice cubes, a smidge of pineapple juice to help get things going and the children took turns blending away. It was thrilling! When the smoothie was deemed finished, the children took turns pouring their drink into their own cups.  Making a smaller smoothie is crucial as all that fruit in those little bellies...well...you know.

Here is this photo again showing the scale of our blender. I love it and the children were so serious when they were blending their smoothies. It was a delicious smoothie and made more than enough for our small group. If you have room in your class to store a small blender I would highly recommend it. Though, I do have to admit I take my blender home to store and use as I find it makes a much better smoothie than our large Oster. Cheers!

making fairy bread in the classroom

For our week of A Rainbow of My Own it was all rainbows all the time. For our cooking project I set up a fairy bread station. While it is not cooking as we know it, it is a lovely food prep project that kiddos really enjoy. We talk about steps and sequence, ingredients, and tools used. We observe what is on the table and the children make declarations and predictions. They then use their fine motor skills to spread the butter onto their bread and sprinkle the sprinkles on top. Food prep is a wonderful opportunity for learning. I try to incorporate it into the classroom each week. When we are unable to work on food or drink prep we usually follow a recipe of sorts such as making play dough. Enjoy!