Baking Up Some Zucchini

Our cooking project of the week was baked zucchini.  We made this recipe on Wednesday and wrote about it on Thursday.  I was pleasantly surprised at how many of the kids said they really liked this!


I sliced the zucchini and put it into a Ziploc bag.  We sprayed some olive oil on the zucchini slices and then added the yummy stuff.  We sprinkled in a little Parmesan cheese, some bread crumbs, a little bit of all purpose seasoning, and a pinch of salt.  We zipped up the bag and shook it like crazy.  (Of course, the kids loved this part!)

We baked them at 350 degrees for 10 minutes, and snack was ready.  The kids loved these and even asked for seconds!  We're not quite done writing about this recipe, so I'll share it when we finish up.

Happy cooking!

Goldfish Bowls

What do you get when you combine rice cakes, blue frosting, and goldfish crackers? You get a lesson in cooking, writing, and sequence of events, if you're in kindergarten. Of course, you get a yummy snack too.

Last week, kids followed simple food prep instructions to create their own snack.

This activity ties in nicely with our cooking unit as well as our reading work in sequencing. If you have kids' cookbooks at home, point out to your kids how their work, following a recipe, is the same as following a recipe in a cookbook!

Keep cooking at home! The kids love sharing the things they're making!

Fruit Tasting

It's a great day in kindergarten, when you get to try new things... and they're yummy!  As part of our cooking unit, kids sampled many different types of fruit last week.  Thank you to the parents who sent fruit for us to try out, and a BIG thank you to our dad in the AM class who dontated and helped prepare our fruit!

 

 

We hope your kids told you about some of their favorite fruits.  By looking at our graphs, it looks like Star Fruit and Oranges were the favorites!

Warm Cookies, On a Cold Winter Day

Is there anything better?

We've been cooking in kindergarten. Today is cookie day. Our AM and PM kindergarten classes will be making chocolate chip cookies.

We spent the morning browsing through cook books, looking to see how the authors use pictures, words, and numbers. Several kids noticed that the directions were numbered in a few of the books. We talked about how this is a sequence of events.

Our new cereal-box-writing-books are a hit! We need a few more empty cereal boxes, if you are able to send some to school. Today we wrote about something we love to cook, or have cooked for us at home.

I hope you'll continue to cook and bake with your kids at home. It's wonderful to build their background knowledge through hands-on practice!

Happy baking!

Kindergarten Writing Homework

As many of you know, our copy budget has been drastically reduced this year. I've provided the first three weeks of writing papers for your child. I know many of you have chosen to have your kids write books or letters to family members instead, which is great! I'd like to encourage you to keep writing with your kids at home. I won't be sending home any more of the copies, since so many families are choosing to write in other ways (and because we can't afford the copies). Here is the printable version, if you'd like to print your own. Please continue to send your child's writing to school as they complete it. We love to see the writing they do at home and we save all of their writing in our binders for you!

Kindergarten Writing Printable

Heart Candy Math

Thank you for sending the Conversation Hearts to school! We had a great time estimating, counting, sorting, and graphing the candies. Before we opened the boxes, kids estimated how many candies they thought were in the box. Guesses ranged from 2-100. After writing down our estimations, we counted the candies. We talked about how difficult it is to simple count a pile of candies. Instead, we moved the candies to a separate pile as we counted, practicing one to one correspondence. Then came the sorting. We sorted by color.

We recorded the number of hearts we had in each color. Of course, we had to read the color words, which was great practice.

Then came the graphing. We discussed how graphs give us a great visual for seeing which color has the most or the least. I'm glad the picture, below, wasn't from my box of candy. Whites and pinks are my favorites!

We documented our work before we tasted the candies.

This was the most excited the kids have been about math all year! It's pretty fun to see them so engaged in a playful learning opportunity like this.

What'cha Got Cookin'?

Have you been having fun in the kitchen? I absolutely love cooking with my kids. I hope you've been inspired to cook with your kids, if it's not something you do already.

This is one of my absolute favorite cookbooks to use with my daughter.

We love seeing what'cha got cookin'! Thanks for cooking with your kids and sharing your photos with us!

We're off to cook dinner together. Happy cooking!