Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Read Across America - Dr Seuss Birthday - March 1

It's Dr Seuss Birthday on March 1.  Most school celebrate Read Across America Day.  There are LOTS of activities on Teaching Blog Addict.  Fun and education!  That's the goal of a great afterschool program!

 

Sunday, February 10, 2013

St. Patricks or Spring Cupcakes - Rainbow

This would be a great cooking project to do with your littles if you have access to an oven.  If you are in a school, the industrial oven will cook faster, so keep your eye on them!

Kids LOVE to help with cooking projects!  You might want to start by reviewing good hand washing practices and then having them do a really good hand wash.  Give every student gloves and instruct them not to touch anything but utensils for food prep.

Basically you will make white cupcake batter as normal, but split it into 6 different containers and color it with food coloring.  Then you will pour a little of each color in each muffin cup, in order.  When cooked it will look like a rainbow.  It's a lot of work but comes out looking great!

Here's the link to the recipe.
 
http://spoonful.com/recipes/taste-rainbow

You'll need:

White Cake Mix.  Enough for as many kids as you have. I always make a couple of extras for building staff that are still there when you are enjoying your treat.

Cupcake Cups

Frosting

Food Coloring

Mixing Bowl including 6 smaller bowls, or cups for separating the batter.

Great jobs for kids....
  • Start by having one of them read all of the cooking instructions on the cake mix box.
    • Talk about how important it is to read all instructions first, that way you know what you will need to do and hopefully you won't mess anything up.
    • Make sure you have all ingredients and utensils ready to go.
  • Have kids pour pre-measured items into the mixing bowl.
  • Stirring (Each can do it for a short time.)
  • Teach them to break eggs and have an older student break the egg over a seperate bowl (incase of shells) and someone else can pour it in.
  • Checking off steps on the directions and reading the next direction.
  • You should do the food coloring to make sure you don't get too much, which can ruin the color.
  • Have students take the colored frosting by the spoonful and pour it in.  That way the amounts should be pretty consistant.
 This could be done in different color combinations for different holidays, School colors, etc.