How Baking and Christmas Cards Can Cover A lot of Math, Science, English and Art

I love everything about Christmas. As soon as November 1st hits and the mall turns into a wonderful display of commercialism, I start thinking about cookies and Christmas cards. This year is the first year my kids can read and write and so I figured it would be great idea to create a Christmas "project" that would not only hit all the right "schooling" buttons, but leave me with enough cookies to last until New Year's!

I decided to let my children create all the Christmas cookie and card gifts this year-one for every neighbor, friend and dog we know.

They each came up with a unique card for every person on our list, not only showcasing their magnificent art "skills" but also allowing them to practice their printing, spelling and writing skills. I only had one request-that they try and come up with one unique personal message for each card.

They then used the computer to look up all the addresses we needed, addressed each envelope, slapped on a stamp and put them in a pile by the front door.

Then came the super fun part-making lots and lots and lots of yummy Christmas cookies. For those of you who bake, I am sure that the following sentence is of no surprise to you:

Baking can have a heck of a lot of math and science in it. 

When we made our cookies we started with measurement-cups to mL, teaspoons to grams and the idea behind doubling and tripling recipes as the additional of another group (or two groups respectively) of whatever we needed.

We then revisited solids and liquids and I introduced the idea classifying substances by their various properties-wet and dry, sticky and greasy, hard and soft, crystalline and amorphous. We also talked about following a method to ensure consistent, fluffy cookies and discussed the reasoning behind a method or a recipe.

We used cookie sheets and cookies to show groups of 4 and 5 as well as played a little with visual multiplication and division. I used various amounts of cookies on a sheet, let's say 12 for example, and then had them determine things such as what half the cookie sheet would be, two cookie sheets and so forth. We made up questions like "if the littlest one ate 4 cookies, how many would be left"  and just generally had fun playing with cookies. 

Then we ate a whole heck of a lot of them and spent the evening lying down in a cookie induced coma. 

Good food, good fun, a good day even including the time the kids were bouncing off the walls in a mom-induced sugar high :)

I love Christmas!