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Make Holiday Baking In Your Homeschool an Exciting Learning Experience
Christmas cookie baking is not only a wonderful holiday tradition. It gives you a chance to spend time together as a family while creating something yummy AND making the house smell amazing! But if you are a homeschooler, you know baking is also an opportunity for plenty of learning experiences.
If you like to bake during the holiday season, take a look at these 7 learning experiences to tie into Christmas cookie baking. You will find that it is a chance to make some yummy treats and provide an educational experience. Here is what you need to know to get started.
7 Learning Experiences to Tie into Your Christmas Cookie Baking This Year
1. Begin by creating a list.
Before you start baking, you will need ingredients. To make sure you have everything you need, try making a shopping list. Creating a list is a great skill for kids to work on, and this gives them the chance to create a list with all sweet things in mind!
2. Give kids a chance to budget.
Once you have created your list, try setting a spending budget. Decide how much you want to spend on your ingredients and be mindful of prices when you shop. Kids can round up when looking at prices, then keep track of spending to make sure you stay on budget while getting the supplies you need. When it comes time to visit the grocery store, here are some more ideas. A grocery store visit can provide all types of learning experiences.
3. Jump into the math with measurement.
Once you have your ingredients, it is time to get baking! Give kids measuring cups and spoons so they can use them to measure out the perfect amounts. This will give kids practice at measuring, reading measurements, and following measurement guidelines when reading recipes.
4. Practice those reading skills.
Give kids a chance to read the recipe to you. Help them with tricky words if needed. This practice will not only give them reading practice, but will also give them experience with reading abbreviations. Many recipes use abbreviated measurement, so this is a great time to get acquainted with those.
5. Tackle those verbs.
Recipes use all sorts of verbs like whisk, whip, blend, puree, chop, stir, mix, fluff, and more. It is important to know what these verbs mean when baking. Take the time to make a cooking verbs list, and talk about what these words mean. It is important to know the difference, and this activity is sure to help!
6. Practice doubling recipes.
Doubling any recipe is easy if you know what to look for. Show children how to make note of measurements in the recipe and what they need to do to double it. Even if you don’t plan on doubling the recipe, you can easily give them pretend scenarios to practice with. This activity also opens the doorway to adding units of measurement!
7. Allow for some educational cookie artistry!
Bake some basic sugar cookies and give kids gel frosting tubes to use as writing utensils. They can pipe the gel onto the cookies and write their names, do math problems, write spelling words, and more. This is a fun and creative way to “write” without a pencil and paper. Plus when they are done, they can eat their work.
Are you ready to head to the kitchen and whip up a batch of Christmas cookies? Consider these 7 learning experiences to tie into holiday cookie baking and see how they can help make the most of the experience. Not to mention some much needed life skills!
Another Learning Experience Is Finding Your Recipes
Head to the internet to search for simple recipes such as:
- Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies
- Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Peanut Butter Balls
- No Bake Candy Barks
- Peanut Butter Cookies
- Divinity Candies
- Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
- Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Snickerdoodles
- Crispy Rice Treats
If you want to incorporate more unconventional learning experiences for the holidays, check out how to make a unit study from your favorite holiday movies too!
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Good luck to you Leela! Hope 2020 is much better for you and your family.
This sounds fantastic! Great ideas!
Winning this would bless my family because we are struggling to make ends meet right now and I can actually pay a lot of bills using PayPal. This would take care of several bills for an entire month, letting us have peace and rest at home.
Best of luck Sonja! It would definitely be a blessing.
Good ideas. We also end up converting from farenheit to celcious because we don’t live in the states. You could try a recipe from another country to practice conversion skills.
Oh that is a wonderful suggestion Jennifer. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for this opportunity. Looking forward to when we can be the ones to give financially. My family and I need to get ahead. Thanking God for his miracles!
Yes Heidi! Best of luck to you!
This is a great idea to help kids relate school to life!
Hey, if you make some cookies from other cultures- Scottish shortbread, German lebkuchen, etc, you can add geography; with a little extra research, throw in some history!
Indeed! Great ideas Noel. Thank you for sharing!
This would allow some extras to our homeschool.
Best of luck Jonita.
I love baking with our kids! We also like to incorporate history and sociology. Most of our traditional Christmas cookies come from different cultures and have interesting stories behind them. This is a great time to share those!
Oooh yes! Love those ideas Andrea. That is a wonderful way to add history and even some geography into Christmas cookie baking. Thanks for sharing that.
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Best of luck on your new homeschooling journey. Exciting!
I accidentally wrote the wrong blog post comment on the giveaway form and can’t change it to you! Do you know how I could do this?
We are new to homeschooling. I have three amazing autistic children and school is just not meeting my sons needs. I’m chronically ill and am in and out of hospital a lot, so all the help we can get is needed. I’m so grateful for my beautiful family and for everything they go through we stick together
This would be way fun getting the kids involved with it all!
Right!?! It’s a great way to learn through doing and incorporate life skills.
Wow!! What a blessing this would be! We would use half for Christmas and the other half as a jump on next years homeschool books and supplies! Thanks for the awesome giveaway!
That’s a great idea! Best of luck to you!
We are preparing and planning for Christmas, including putting together gifts to bless those less fortunate than ourselves. A cash gift would bless us in blessing others. Praying that your generosity blesses someone who truly needs it.
Love that you are teaching your children to bless others during the holidays! Best of luck to you!
I love how we are always learning! Can’t wait to bake with my girls!
Right!?! Homeschooling is the best!
We love holiday baking and making gingerbread houses together,
@tisonlyme143
Yes! Gingerbread house making is the best.