Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Sir Cumference and the First Round Table - Cookie Activity



Last night, we read Cindy Neuschwander's Sir Cumference and the First Round Table. Before our story time, the younger girls (ages 4 and 6), helped me prepare a cookie snack to go along with our reading.

I rolled out a small amount of sugar cookie dough, and they used a glass to cut six circular cookies.

Then, we dabbed the edge of the cookies in candy sprinkles. For each cookie, I repeated to them, "Now, let's put candy on the circumference, or outside edge, of our circle".


Finally, the girls placed a chocolate chip in the center, or as close to it as they could figure, of each cookie, and used the extra dough to make a couple of special cookies for the Man of the House.



While the cookies were baking, I read the story to the children. In it, Sir Cumference, his wife, Lady Di of Ameter, and their son, Radius, must help King Arthur arrange for a suitable conference table, for meeting with his knights. After trying out many different shapes (leaving a lot of room for additional follow-up activities - with, or without cookies, depending on your preference), they settle on a circle.

In honor of the satisfactory solution to the table problem, King Arthur decrees, that from that day forward, the parts of the circle, the circumference, diameter, and radius, will be named after the knight, and his family.

As a follow up to the story, and to see if the children were listening, and understanding, I quickly melted a few chocolate chips, and spooned them into a plastic baggie, snipping the corner, so I could pipe a line of chocolate onto each child's cookie - either a radius, or diameter - their choice. I don't think they'll be mixing those two up again, anytime soon.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

7 comments:

Annette W. said...

Can you be any more brilliant?

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I like radius and diameter lines on cookies - what a great way to reinforce these concepts! The cookies look yummy too. Did you display supreme will power and didn't have any?

Phyllis said...

Very cute idea!

An Almost Unschooling Mom said...

Raising a Happy Child - I started my own little math activity, counting calories, yesterday - so I didn't even make myself one :)

Ticia said...

Yum, yum, yum. I love how you kept repeating it as they put the candy on.

Christy Killoran said...

You have a cookie for everything! I love it. Like Annette said, BRILLIANT!

Unknown said...

Ahhh- chocolate- makes any math lesson memorable...