Friday, August 20, 2010

Dinosaur Puzzle Cookies

I wanted to surprise the kids with a dinosaur activity, to go along with their evening snack. I saw this dinosaur puzzle cookie cutter, on Amazon, that I though was pretty cool, and just about perfect, not that I could have gotten it by tonight, and it's listed as unavailable, anyway.

So, I decided to try making my own dinosaur puzzle cookies.

I mixed up another batch of chocolate, sugar cookie dough. I used the quick, and easy recipe from Debra Pearson's Alphabake Cookbook, but any sugar cookie recipe would do. And, I do feed the children lots of fruits, and vegetables too. We just don't often get as crafty with those.

After rolling out the dough, I used a knife to free hand cut some large dinosaurs. One small batch of dough, was enough to make three dinosaur shapes.

I transferred the shapes to cookie sheets, and cut them up into pieces, beginning with a letter "D" (using a cutter from the Alphabake set), in the middle. The first puzzle, I cut simply, with straight lines. But the second two dinosaurs, I cut into curvy, puzzle piece kind of designs.




Then, I separated them out, on the pan, and put them in the freezer for 20 minutes or so, to keep them from spreading too much while they baked.


They still spread some, which made them challenging, but fun to put back together (note to self, next time take pictures of all the dinosaur pieces, before you separate them). It made a fun game, before snack time.

I'm not sure if we got them exactly right, but there wasn't much time to ponder our job, before these dinosaurs joined the rest of their kind, in becoming extinct.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

7 comments:

Joyful Learner said...

This is just way too cool!

Phyllis said...

Your kids sure are lucky to have you for a Mom. This is such a wonderful idea. It would be great for a dinosuar birthday party, too. I can't keep up with all the fantastic ideas you have. I have your ideas that I want to do bookmarked on my favorites list, and it is becoming too full!

Paisley Parmer said...

Love it! Added a link to the post on my blog in the post "Including Little One’s in on Your Dinosaur Study" http://tiny.cc/jatu0

Unknown said...

Again- even your snacks are educational- you are amazing!

Ticia said...

Oh come on I'm sure all sorts of exciting things happen to your fruits and veggies when you're not looking. :).
Another home run

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

Poor dinosaurs :) I like the idea of becoming a paleontologists and assembling a dinosaur out of pieces. I am afraid my scientist wouldn't have patience for this and would have eaten most of the skeleton right away.

Christy Killoran said...

Wow! That is a very cool cookie puzzle project! I love the idea. I have to keep this in mind. Thanks for the tip about taking a picture too - I don't think I would think to do that either.