Monday, December 06, 2004

Happy St Nicholas Day, and cookies

Today, December 6, is Saint Nicholas Day. I always want to put some sweets and cookies in my sons' shoes the night before (wrapped up or something of course -- eeew!), but don't actually do it. Today I'm planning to make cookies, though!

We already have some flour resident on the counter. I made biscuits last night to go with dinner, and yielded to the boys' request to have some flour to stir. They measured out a cup of flour each into their own bowls, commenced with stirring, and then began to request various additions. Cinnamon, ground cloves, salt, dry milk, baking powder, and I added some cardamom and ginger -- and we smelled everything before adding it to their bowls. They stirred their flour mixtures and played with it in the bowls... and after I got my biscuits in the oven they received permission to dump their flour on the counter. Woohoo! They spent the next 45 minutes, I think, pushing their flour around, making shapes, making roads, using their spoons and the biscuit cutter to do stuff. They got the okay to leave their flour until this afternoon; I amazed myself by being okay with that.

Son2 (nearly 5) has revisited his flour pile this morning. He spent some time filling the biscuit cutter to the handle, lifting the biscuit cutter, and declaring, "Volcano!" as the flour slumped down. Heeheehee! -- very fun. He even swept up a bit of a flour spill with our little brush and dustpan.

After school I hope to have a plan for making some cookies. Probably some sugar cookie recipe with spices added. Cookies are a lot easier when the kids make whatever they want and put it on the pans themselves -- and I put the dough in the fridge when I want to stop. Yay! The end of the tyranny of the multi-batch dough! Normally I completely avoid making cookies because the baking takes forever (whine, whine), but it seems doable this year. Maybe we can make shortbread sometime. We will definitely make biscotti for teacher gifts -- it's very easy and yummy, and went really well last year.

After today's cookie making, we will need to wipe up the (finished concrete) floor to actually get ALL of the flour up. Very easy for kids to do, so I am happy :)

MUSIC: Xmas music currently playing
A local radio station that's playing all Christmas music until Christmas. I can't find my Roches Christmas CD :(

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just discovered your blog through the WTM site. I have a 7 year old son who has been exclusively homeschooled *so far* but I'm considering school in the near future. So, I'm curious about how you envision (and implement) "afterschooling" and how you made that decision?? I look forward to reading more about just that precise subject on your blog, of course! But any info or encouragement for would-be schoolers who are homeschoolers at heart??
Thanks,
Tiffany
aka DrTiff
www.xanga.com/drtiff