SACHS Blog Carnival #7 - Kitchen Fun

Hello everyone, I hope you’re all doing well. I have the privilege of hosting the 7th South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers for 2012! I decided on Kitchen Fun since I love working in the kitchen - How to keep little children busy with fun kitchen activities on cold winter days, learning alongside my Mother how to prepare a meal and our current favourite, playing with chocolate!

 Making cookies is a great way to entertain little ones.

What you’ll need:

A cookie dough - I share a recipe below that is very useful in this case. You can roll it out over and over and it stays the same, doesn’t break or crumble, works like a dream.

- Raisins 

- little pink or silver eatable balls

- Astroes 

- Any other candy you would like to decorate the cookies with.

- Cookie shapes of your choice. On this day we used a man shape cookie cutter.

Recipe for the dough:

Makes: 1025g

Preparation time: 15min

Ingredients:

325g Butter

175g icing sugar

100 egg (2 extra large eggs)

500g cake flour 

1g salt

Method:

Mix all the ingredients together in a stand mixer until well combined.

It will have a crumbly consistency.  Take out the dough on a smooth, clean surface and mix until everything sticks together. It will be a bit sticky, don’t add more flour.

Wrap in cling wrap and allow to cool for at least an hour in the fridge.

You can use this dough as a tart dough too, it’s so easy to make and it can also be frozen for up to 3 months!

Method:

Roll out the dough and cut little men out of the dough.

Give each child 4-6 men on a baking tray.

Give each child a bowl with all the candy he/she can use and let them decorate.

This can keep then busy for a long time. Make sure the candy is pushed into the dough a little, or they may roll of.

Bake on 180 degree for about 10 minutes or until golden brown.

All done! 

My mother also takes time in helping and teaching me in the kitchen at a more advanced level. Two years ago she bought me the book Baking by James Peterson. Once a week we would take a recipe out of it and bake. This book gave us tips and techniques and stirred up a love for the kitchen.

Since then I spend lots of time with my mother in the kitchen. My mother took on even more challenging things. When we discovered the Lindt Chocolate Studio in Cape Town my mother immediately volunteered to do courses on working with chocolate with me.

Here I wrote about the Chocolate Decorations Course we did together:

Here my mother and I did the Hand Crafted Truffle Course, where we did lots of piping and messing with chocolate. We had lots of fun together, working side by side and learning together.

We also did the Moldings and Fillings Course together, which was my mothers favorite - painting and decorating and making the chocolate really pretty!

Besides learning with my mother, and love for the kitchen my mother and I have built a great relationship this way. 

I would encourage mothers to keep on working and learning with your children in the kitchen even as they get older.

There are so many things to teach your children about baking/cooking!

Here are kitchen fun ideas from other home school bloggers too:

Karen from Karen’s Clan shares some fun they got up to in the kitchen a couple of weekends ago. They created a pretend restaurant complete with menus and bills to match her son’s heart's desire to bake and serve!

Wendy from Loving Learning wrote a post about when her son was picked as one of the lucky “minichefs” to spend the day at the Mount Nelson Hotel kitchen a few weeks ago. He was taught and encouraged how to make a chocolate cake and decorate it with all the different kinds of sweets you can think of.

Trys from Trixi’s HomeEd Academy School Time share a few posts about how much fun, learning in the kitchen can be:

Here her son baked her a birthday cake, learning measuring and counting.

Here she shares how much her son loves school now, after learning in the kitchen.

And here she shares how her children is never board during holidays due to home education.

Nadene from Practical Pages share how they approach learning to cook and bake and her favourite meals where everyone joins in to cook together.

Donette from The Journey, share one of their Kitchen Activity Staples, something her son calls his Crazy Breakfast. She generally don't allow him to have too many of this Marshmallow treats for breakfast, and it is an activity he can fully participate in. It generally happens early in the day and is a winner as they always make these to take to play-dates and meet-ups. He is so proud to share this treat he helped create .

Elize from Bearakademie loves cooking and baking, in general working in the kitchen, but she doesn't like a mess. Trying to teach two boys to love food and working in the kitchen (while not making a mess) is a little difficult for her, but they have learned to keep their trusty damp kitchen cloth next to them when making something!

She doesn't organize special "projects" to teach her boys how to do things in the kitchen, they learn through everyday experiences, and help her when they have to bake for the HS group, someone's birthday (or their own), or when they are in the mood for something specific to eat. This way the kitchen isn't just for special occasions, it is part and parcel of everyday life.

Taryn from Hayes Happenings shares some kitchen fun contributions from the Hayesfamily:

Solo Bake for a 7 year old!

Fun at the Mount Nelson with Minichefs

Nelson Mandela Day 2011 - baking  for others!

And Christmas cookies in a jar!

Bronwyn from Three Marcus Boys shared a quick,easy recipe to make your own ice cream.

Melanie from Mel’s Mouthful on Mothering shares a post about her son who made a “Magic Malva Pudding” to enter in a competition for Kids National Geographic. This recipe was his favourite South African recipe. 

Here my mother, Linnie from Back To Ancient Ways, shares what triggered our hours of working and learning in the kitchen - James Peterson’s book, Baking.   

In her posting, I don’t want to be like chocolate, she shares about our first Lindt Chocolate Workshop, what a challenge it is to work with chocolate which is very ‘unforgiving’ towards the slightest heat fluctuation. Also how as a mother and leader of the next generation, who long to influence her children for God, she cannot be like chocolate - easily provoked and high maintenance.

In the posting, Another Lindt chocolate course, about handmade truffles, my mother shares how kitchen activities can be a place that keep families together, stay emotionally together in the midst of struggles, stay tuned in the hopes and dreams of your children.

Mom also shares on our latest course on Mouldings and Fillings and how raising children is pretty much the same. How mothers should be sensitive to the mold in what their children are shaped into and how each child’s personality is like a filling, different, mixed in faith, to make them the person God intend them to be.

And on a much lighter note, mother shares on making bird nests with the little ones, as part of their Bird-lapbook.

Thank you to everyone who entered your stunning Kitchen Fun postings into this months Blog Carnival! It was lots of fun reading them all and I hope they inspire you too!

This is the 7th SACHS Blog Carnival for 2012 under the theme Kitchen Fun which is part of the South African Carnival of Homeschool Blogs. To join the carnival or visit past carnivals visit the SACHS Blog page. We hope you enjoy browsing 

Baking Greetings