After a day of baking, and candy making, goodies to share with the neighbors - gingersnaps, fudge, peanut brittle, and sugar cookies, I figured it was a good time (the kitchen's going to need a thorough mopping anyway) to let the children decorate the sugar cookies we'd made to go along with Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Christmas Cookies, Bite Sized Holiday Lessons, a quirky vocabulary lesson, in which every definition has to do with making Christmas cookies.
This is an activity we enjoy every year. I pull the leaves out of the table, so everyone can reach everything easily, send the Man of the House off to the garage where he won't have to witness the mess, turn on the Christmas music, and set the children up with plain sugar cookies, plates to work on, plenty of spoons and butter knives, frosting in multiple colors, and lots and lots of sprinkles.
It's their time to frost...
...and pipe...
...and sprinkle...
...and generally have fun together.
The end results are never beautiful...
...but they go nicely with a glass of milk, and a story, like Dandi Daley Mackall's legend of the first Christmas cookies - The Gift of the Christmas Cookie, Sharing the True Meaning of Jesus' Birth.
Both Mackall and Rosenthal's stories have recipes for sugar cookies at the back. I have to admit we didn't try either of them. With all the baking we were already doing, I decided to let the children make their cookies with a sugar cookie mix, sent to them in a box of Christmas goodies, from their Aunt Esther, or the Queen of Christmas, as the children are calling her now - it was a really big box.
It's great to be a homeschooler.
You know, I have that book somewhere, and I just realized it's not in there with all of my other books. I love it for the vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteThey may not win awards, but they sure look to have a lot of love in them. Besides, that's what my stuff looks like when decorated.....
How do you find all these books with activities attached? Is this just years of looking or is there a helpful list somewhere. I thought we had a lot of children's books but you have provided so many titles with which I am not familiar. Inspiring-thank you.
ReplyDeleteMy kids love decorating cookies and they love to use a lot of sprinkles! The end results are always funny.
ReplyDeleteSarahElisabeth - Try typing "recipe" or "instructions included" into your library's search engine, and then limiting the search to "children's literature" or whatever your library has that's close to that. You won't find them all, but enought to keep you busy :)
ReplyDeleteSugar cookie decorating is so much fun. That book selection looks great.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I don't care for sugar cookies or icing, but decorating is surely fun! I happen to think that the results are rather pretty.
ReplyDelete