cooking together

In a previous post, I mentioned that for science this year
(and probably throughout the elementary years) we've opted to do nature study, gardening, cooking, reading living books about science and visiting science museums.

Most of the time I am baking something the kids help me. They love to measure, mix, cut out cookies, knead dough, etc. We get a chance to talk about how yeast works and our sourdough starter and the different tastes of salt and sugar though they look the same. We mix food colorings together to see what color will result. We experiment with adding ingredients and leaving them out.

We have a standing tradition around our house that every time it rains, we make cookies. (Since it's been raining for the past 14 days around here, we have not honored that tradition upon each occasion!) It's still fun to get to try different cookie recipes.

Each child has their own recipe book. When they help make something, I print off the recipe and they put it in their book. Often they draw a picture of the final product on the recipe page.