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!

glitter and spice

 

Each month we feature a nursery rhyme for the children to learn. September had us chanting, reading, and singing I Had a Little Nut Tree. To give the children a little boost in what I like to call dot-connecting, I whipped up a batch of our autumn play-dough scented with cinnamon and nutmeg with a dash of silver and gold glitter to make it shine.

Along with the play dough, I had set up a scent center with small squares of sand paper, a cinnamon stick, and a nutmeg.

 

 

The children enjoyed rubbing the spices across the sandpaper and then smelling the spice scent that appeared like magic. They noticed that the play dough smelled the same and then enjoyed rubbing the dough on top of the sand paper to see what would happen.

 

Both the cinnamon stick and the nutmeg made an appearance with the dough....many times....

We also painted with silver and gold paint where we used our fine motor skills to remove our cut paper scraps from the green box and then press them onto the sticky-glittery paint.