Learning Together - Baking

If you want to get really creative with this one make a card that has 3 or 4 recipe books and their page numbers:

The Everyday Cookbook p17
All Baked Goods             p 89
My Handwritten Book     p14

(these are all fictional!)

I couldn't resist this one - see the little photo bomber? He is taking his own photo!

Give your child the stack of recipe books and get them to locate the titles you have listed and find the recipes in each one.

Now they will read the recipe, ingredients etc to you as you make it or get them to make it themselves (with supervision appropriate to their skills).

This activity is a great one for:

• reading alternative texts - a recipe or 'instructional writing' is very different from the usual narrative style books children bring home and it requires different reading skills. 
• measuring and fractions - reading the measures in the recipes, weighing or measuring into cup values is a great 'real life' maths application.
• fine motor skills - leveling off teaspoons, gently pouring, mixing, scooping, plugging in the mixer etc.... all skills that require control.
• contribution - in families everyone needs to (and should) contribute. You are a team and you work together for the good of the whole. Regular baking also means you'll turn out a child who will be a flatmate people want!
• life skills - as above but also it gives great opportunity for specific discussion - in our house we get out all the ingredients (so we can make sure we have them all) and then after each one is used they go away so the bench is tidy-ish!! when we finish. You can also talk about substitutions in recipes, what ingredients do what, why you use salt....
• being involved with food - if the experts are to be believed involving children in the process of making and understanding food sets them up to be better and healthier eaters.
• appreciation - genuine pleasure and praise is usually the result of things that are good to eat. What a great feeling for your child to receive that kind of proper appreciation.

At our place my aim is that Flip will make the school lunches baking for the week and so we hope (but don't always succeed) to make this a weekly event. After he made this recipe I gave him my scant selection (most are in NZ) of recipe books so he could find some more recipes he'd like to try - more great reading experiences: using contents pages, scanning through ingredients etc. 

I want both my boys to leave home with some easy recipes they can make to nourish them and others they love.

This was the recipe Flip used. 

(apologies this recipe is pretty much everything that many people can't have but it is an ancient recipe I loved as a child and it is simple and successful which is what works for us at present)

Ma's Coconut Loaf

1 c sugar

1 1/2 c self raising flour (we just use normal flour and 3 tsps of baking powder)

1 1/4 c coconut (shredded or desiccated) 

pinch of salt

1 c milk (I'm sure you could use soy/other for a dairy free version)

Add all ingredients to a bowl and stir.

Bake at 180 degrees C for 45 minutes till golden and a skewer comes out clean.

Learning Together a series for primary aged children and their parents - activities that break up homework monotony, promote skills and create positive experiences together.

love you more than homework that equals lunch box baking duty complete xxx