Cookie Lessons

Okay, so this may not technically qualify as an adventure, but it is one of our favorite things to do on a cold winter day. Our boys ask to make cookies about 3 times a week. They love to pour in the flour, sugar, and eggs, and especially to lick the beaters. We foster this, not so much for the cookies, but because we like the idea of the boys learning to cook.

There are lots of good lessons in cooking. First, cooking is a skill (though some people may possess talent) that we want to develop in our boys. Secondly, if you talk about what you're doing, you teach kids a lot of math. As they gain experience with cups, pints, teaspoons, and tablespoons, they can also learn a lot about fractions. For example, when putting in 3 cups of flour, we'll use the half cup. Already, the oldest knows that 2 halves will make a full cup. This may seem trivial, but there's a lesson on fractions, adding fractions, multiplication, and division. Take it from a school teacher, this background knowledge will put him ahead when it comes to operating on fractions. Next time, maybe we'll use the 1/3 cup. Suddenly this does seem like an adventure!

Of course, that leaves us with far more cookies than we should ever eat, so we've decided to fatten up our neighbors. The boys love to pile in the van and drive around our neighborhood delivering cookies to anyone we want. We often let the boys help make the list, and as they get older we'll talk about who might NEED cookies, and hopefully instill something important in them. This adventure is cheap, easy, fun, and gives our kids the kind of experiences that we feel are important to help them grow into well-rounded people (pun intended).

Our youngest making, well eating, Christmas cookies.

Who didn't do this as a kid!

We love these "death by chocolate cookies."  The boys love licking the beaters!