“Monica, can we make soft, chewy chocolate chip cookies? I like them better than the crunchy kind.”
 

“Ooh wait! Can we please make snickerdoodles?!”
 

“I’m not a big fan of milk chocolate...can we use white chocolate chips instead?”

These...are typically some of the questions I get when I offer the kids a baking session as an afternoon activity.

Baking with kids can be hard work (as I’m sure most of you know). They have their conflicting quirks and tastes, which can be rather problematic when we’ve only got one recipe. To combat this, I decided to try something new and present them with a cookie challenge. In this challenge, the children were paired up and given a basic cookie recipe. Then, they had to work together to follow the instructions carefully in order to make the dough.

Here comes the fun part.....

Once the groups had completed their dough, the dough was split in half among the two partners. From then on, they were given the opportunity to put anything they wanted in their cookies (with the ingredients I provided). They got to choose from marshmallows, graham crackers, chocolate chips, sour gummies, shredded coconut, popcorn, oatmeal, cereal, wow butter, jam, cream cheese, cinnamon, caramel sauce, chocolate syrup, and Fudge-O’s.

I wanted them to get creative and let them go crazy with their cookies. It was fun to see what type of concoction they came up with (albeit, the kitchen was insanely messy after).  

Liam wanted to add everything.

Nathan and Ethan decided to go with the s’mores route (always a tasty choice).

Some of the kids wanted to add food colouring to give it more flair...Niko even added some popcorn in his!

The kids all worked really well together. It was messy, yet strangely cohesive. One thing was for sure; they all came up with some delicious looking cookies!

The activity was super fun and I would definitely do this again with some harder ingredients to give them more of a challenge. If you guys have any ideas, feel free to let me know!

Until next time,

Monica

After a long season of numerous pool games, the playoff series will be starting up in June. This year's final competitors will consist of Alexander, who has been dominating in this year’s season games. This will be his third playoff appearance with a perfect season record. Due to Alex’s excellent pool skills, he has earned the  nickname: “Russian Assassin”. His competition will be Adrian, the 2013 Grade 2 Champion, who will also be enjoying his third playoffs. Adrian’s outstanding pool talent and sportsmanship has made him a popular player in this tournament. The finals will be held on June 9^th, 2015 at Gilmore Elementary School. If you happen to be in the Sr. OSC, please feel free to read the bulletin board beside the pool table. It has all the details about this tournament.

Hey families & friends,

Although Earth Week has been over for quite some time, Senior OSC made a point of creating a legacy to leave behind in honour of the special occasion. As a group, we were invited by West Richmond Community Centre to go over and help add some colour to the Hugh Boyd artificial turf area. Located around the perimeter of the field are several cement blocks plain in colour. It was our job to add a spark to the blocks and 'bring them to life'. The children paired up and were assign one side of the block to do whatever they'd like.

We got our creative juices flowing, our paint rollers at the ready and away...we...went....







The inspiration for the block
was drawn from a spectrum of different techniques including tape painting, abstract painting, splatter painting and even the 'X-men'.