Baking with children

I think I've cracked it! I cooked with both children and there were no fights, no dropped eggs or dogs covered in flour (that was making pizza today). There was some hands in the flour type exploration but all in a controlled way and not all over the counter. It went well. Chocolate drops were eaten, bananas squished and 2 cakes made without me feeling like it was all going haywire. 

The secret - 2 bowls of everything so that each child could do their own and not fight. A recipe that has all the dry ingredients mixed in one bowl, all the wet in another and the final mixing is supposed to be rough. A little prep by mama before hand and it all went smoothly. Both kids loved the dry stage and were happy stirring it up and not interested in the wet particularly (well Isabel did put her hand in to mix it but not for too long). The recipe was Polka Dot Banana Bread and the resulting cakes were cut up and given to various friends so we aren't drowning in cake. 

The only brief bit of fighting was after Isaac had licked his own spoon and wanted Isabel's I suggested he lick the bowl instead and then both kids stuck their faces in the bowls and thought it great fun.  

Isaac made a shopping list today. Autonomous home education, which is what we try to do, can be a big leap of faith on the part of the schooled parent. It's hard to let go of the expectations of when and how things should happen. We don't sit down and encourage Isaac to do school work but we do have things around the house for him to get interested in. In the midst of play today he decided a shopping list was in order - I'd like to say it came about because they were playing shops or something but mostly it was because there was a pad of paper on the floor... we like to call it strewing but mostly it's just poor housekeeping.

The list was:

iscy (ice cream)
choc (chocolate)
yogut (yogurt)

and then he did a tick at the top once we'd transferred it onto the online supermarket order.


He then wanted to take a photo of the list himself and then one of his sister.

She then had to take a photo too.