Beyond the Gingerbread House: Holiday Baking
The Christmas season is the perfect time to incorporate some holiday baking lessons into your homeschool. There are often extra holiday guests to bake for, and homemade treats make great gifts for friends and neighbors. Whether you fill a plate with traditional favorites or try your hand at unique recipes from around the world, baking with your children is a great holiday activity and a fun, festive way to celebrate and learn at the same time!
Holiday Baking Tricks and Safety Tips
This article from Simple Homeschool offers several compelling reasons to incorporate baking into your curriculum, and outlines the way homeschool mom, Jamie, organizes her homeschool cooking course. Holiday baking could be a great way to jumpstart a child’s interest in a more disciplined course through the rest of the winter or in the spring.
One Time Through describes helpful tips for baking with small or multiple children.
This kitchen safety rules chart from Snack Works is a great list to print and hang in your kitchen as a general safety refresher for everyone in your family.
KidsHealth addresses children themselves with some great ways to be safe while cooking, baking, and even storing the items they’ve prepared.
Holiday Baking Recipes for Little Hands
Skip all the tricky gingerbread measuring and cutting, and get right to the fun part–decorating–with these graham cracker gingerbread houses. The author also suggests a cute way to incorporate them into your holiday decor by using them as votive holders for flameless votive candles.
Fudge can be tricky, but this peppermint crunch fudge from Real House Moms boasts a no-fail microwavable recipe that makes it easy for young children to safely help with–and it’s too pretty not to add to your holiday table!
Potato chip cookies are an intriguing blend of sweet and salty, and require smashed potato chip crumbs that little hands will be happy to prepare.
Rainbow ring cookies look beautiful –and appear much more complicated than they actually are. This is a great recipe for older children to prep and younger children to assemble.
These Christmas cookie puzzles are a cute twist on iced sugar cookies and are a unique way to gift cookies to friends and neighbors.
Around the World on a Cookie Tray
Your children can pick a recipe–or two, or three!–to experience a sweet holiday tradition from a land far away. These can make great additions to a presentation or report as your student learns geography in a fun and creative way.
While some of them do require more patience and are a bit more complicated than the simple, kid-friendly recipes above, children will still be able to perform most of the prep and assembly. More supervision or direction may be needed, especially if the recipes are unfamiliar.
