Natural Egg Dye

While this won't be helpful for the Easter that's just over, you can pocket this idea away for next year. Last year we attempted to dye eggs with natural dyes. Since our class is only a half day, my co-teacher and I made several different colors out of various materials. Our thought was that most of the students would dye eggs at home with the kit you buy at the store and we could show them a different way of doing it.

Since the kids didn't see us make the dye the idea that we were doing something different was totally lost on them. My co-teacher decided that this year we would make dye with the kids. She found information on beets and red cabbage which coud be added to the egg cooking water. She cooked the cabbage for awhile at home and brought in a container of it so the kids could see it. The beets she brought in completely raw so she could cut them up and let the kids put the pieces in the pot.


So, with one pot of beets and another of cooked red cabbage, the kids carefully added raw eggs (yes, we washed hands after handling the eggs) and water to cover it all. Several kids decided to go with my co-teacher to put them on the stove. After the eggs were cooked we trooped down to the kitchen to see how it went.

The beet eggs came out a pretty mottled pink and the cabbage eggs were mottled light purple, also very pretty. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of the finished eggs, so you'll have to take my word for it. We offered the eggs as part of snack. Most kids chose to try one, but as usual, the yolks were not popular.

I'm guessing we will do a variation of this activity again, so if you have any ideas, bring them on!

Allergy Note: If you have any egg allergies in class you should not do this activity. Instead, find other things to dye, like fabric or paper.

Note on the Picture Above: You can't see it in the photo, but there is an adult kneeling at the table mere inches away from the sharp knife on the table. No, we do not trust young two-year-olds with sharp knives, despite my desire to let them be independent.

Biscuits

I asked in the jam post what we should put our jam on. Biscuits! Biscuits are great for young kids. Despite the mythology surrounding the perfect biscuit, it's pretty hard to mess them up. You can mix them by hand or by spoon, and you can tell personal family stories if you're from a biscuit-making family. You might also ask parents to contribute stories if you're from an area of the country that's likely to have biscuit makers in every family.

Sadly, I am not a biscuit maker. I only made my own biscuits for the first time a few weeks ago. My co-teacher, on the other hand, makes them regularly. For class I think she used the recipe from Joy of Cooking just to be sure that the scaled-up recipe would work. As with our other cooking, we had a big bowl and lots of mixing opportunities. My co-teacher brought in her biscuit-cutting glass from home, which was a novelty to many children. I would have used a cookie cutter, which shows you what I know.

With the little kids we didn't bring them into the kitchen with us. The kitchen in our facility is an adult place and is often being used for functions while school is in session. The older children regularly go to the kitchen, but they're tall enough to see things. Sometimes I will take one or two children to the kitchen with me to watch me put things into the oven or take them out, but so far we haven't brought the whole class of two-year-olds into the kitchen with us.

The biggest challenge with this type of cooking is keeping track of hand washing. Many children helped, then went to play for a bit, and then came back. Each time they came back we helped them to wash their hands. This is why having two teachers and a parent helper each day is such a good thing!

Allergy Notes: Usually, bisuits require both milk and butter, which can can problematic for milk-allergic children. Soy margarine (I use Earth Balance brand) works for the butter. For the milk you can substitute soy milk or rice milk. I imagine nut milk would work as well, but they aren't allowed at our program. Clearly, biscuits are not gluten free. I'm hoping to do some gluten-free baking with my other class, so hopefully I'll have a solution for that in the future.

Strawberry Jam

Did you know that bread machines can make jam? Look at the picture of my ancient bread machine keypad. Way down at the bottom, #11, is "Jam." My co-teacher noticed this first on her bread machine (almost as ancient) last year. Not only that, but her instruction manual actually had a recipe for strawberry jam in it. You can see where this is going.

So...yes, we make strawberry jam with 2-year-old children. It's fun. They get to cut with plastic knives.

You can easily find a recipe on the internet, and most of them only have strawberries, pectin, sugar, and lemon juice in them. Here's what we've learned the last two times we've done this.

• Wash the strawberries and cut off the tops before the kids come to school.
• Let them cut the strawberries as best they can. There will be a lot of mushing. This is ok, it's all going to get mushed anyway.
• If you use packaged lemon juice, DO NOT let anyone squeeze it directly into the machine. Measure it into a cup first. Go ahead and laugh, but I bet you know why I say this!
• Put the bread machine on the floor so that kids can look inside while it's mixing. It will heat up at some point, but the beginning of the cycle always involves mixing. It's also a good way to practice approaching appliances slowly to feel how hot they are before touching.
• On that last point, you might want to do a test to see how hot your bread machine will get on the outside. Neither of ours gets terribly hot, so even if someone touched them without going slowly there wouldn't be any burns. I've seen other machines that do get very hot. That's not a good choice for school.

If you live in an area where strawberries grow, it would be ideal to go pick strawberries and then use them in jam.

One downside of the whole jam-making thing is that the jam has to refrigerate to be completely set. Some of the younger ones may not remember that you even made jam if a few days go by between when you make it and when you eat it. If your class can visit the refrigerator when you put it there and when you get it, all the better.

Oh, and while you're enjoying your jam, why not read Jamberry, by Bruce Degen? Sometimes the twos will only pay attention to the words in a book while they're eating, so what a perfect opportunity.

What do you eat your jam on? That's another post for another day. But please let them use knives to spread their own jam!

Cutting With Knives

No, I don't really have a knife "thing." I just think it's important for kids to have the opportunity to practice with the kinds of tools they see in their everyday lives.

In this case, I'm talking about knives again. I've talked about spreading things with knives and now I want to talk about cutting with them.

So, what kinds of knives can children cut with? I'm partial to plastic knives, which have just enough of an edge that they can cut soft things but aren't so sharp that they're likely to cause terrible damage. Yes, you can cut yourself with a plastic knife. I've done it myself. But this is why we talk about safety with the kids. Another choice is a knife similar to the safety pumpkin knives you see at Halloween each year. I have a co-worker who buys them from a local farmstand to keep in her pre-K classroom at all times. You never know when someone will have a need to cut stuff, after all.

What kinds of things can kids cut? Just open your fridge. Strawberries are an obvious one. Mushrooms are easy. Things that you can first cut into strips for the children to then cut into small bits are great. At home my kids will cut green pepper, eggplant, and zucchini this way. Too bad they won't eat any of those things! Here's a partial list of foods to cut, but I'm sure you can come up with many more ideas:

• cooked eggs
• red peppers
• cheese
• bread slices (maybe for croutons or to take the crusts off)
• celery
• strawberries
• mushrooms
• zuccini or summer squash
• grapes
• apples or pears (cut into slices first)

You see, the list could go on forever. So get cutting!

p.s. If someone in your class or your house really wants to try cutting that big pretzel rod (or something else really crunchy or hard) with a plastic knife, let them. They can't learn if they don't try, but you might want to stand close by to supervise. Do feel free to talk about things we don't cut, like non-edible parts of the room, clothing, and furniture.

Allergy Note: As a general rule, if a person can't safely eat something, he or she shouldn't be asked to prepare it in any way. If you have food allergies in your class, make sure there is something safe for the food allergic student to cut that can still be included in whatever you're cooking and that it won't come in contact with allergenic foods before the food allergic person handles it.

Corn and Bean Salsa

Today we made some salsa with the two-year olds. It was really simple. A can of corn, a can of black beans (rinsed and drained), about a cup of mild tomato salsa, and then tortilla chips to eat it with. Here are a few tips on simple salsa making (and no digs on how it's not REAL salsa since we didn't make the tomato part ourselves!):

- Get a REALLY BIG BOWL and LOTS of long-handled spoons for mixing. When you have 4 or more toddlers stirring at the same time with the corn flying, you'll understand why! We only have 10 kids. If you have more children than that, consider making two batches in different bowls so you have space for all the helpers who want to take part.

- If you have a chef in your class, invite him or her to help you drain the corn or drain and rinse the beans. In our classroom it's tough to let kids help with this part, but they were interested.

- Let them help you open the cans as much as you can. You may ask them to hold the can or try to turn the handle.

- For serving, put the salsa in bowls and provide spoons. The kids may not want to dip their chips into something they don't know about yet. Some kids may just want to dig in and eat the salsa like a side dish. We had several who didn't touch the chips, one who didn't touch the salsa, one who picked out and ate all the corn, and several who ate everything but ate the salsa separately from the chips.

Allergy Note: Got a corn allergy in your class? Omit the corn. The beans still taste good with the salsa on them. Make sure you use something other than corn tortilla chips if you use chips at all.

Spreading With a Knife

Spreading may not seem like it qualifies as a real cooking activity, but it's something preschoolers see their caregivers do for them everyday. In addition to using the muscles of the hand and wrist that are later used for writing, learning to spread with a knife can give a preschooler a sense of accomplishment. After all, knives are grown-up tools.

Here's what you need:

- A spreader: butter knives, plastic knives with dull edges, craft sticks, and tongue depressors all make good spreaders. If you want to avoid the knives, go for a fat tongue depressor because it's a little easier to control in small hands. Kids know when it's not a real knife, so use something shaped like a knife if you can.

- Something to spread: apple butter, cream cheese, butter, nut butter of your choice, and hummus are all good things. For the first experience choose something very easy to spread, like apple butter or hummus. Anything that's spreadable is a candidate. Wacky stuff will get more attention and discussion.

- Something on which to spread: celery sticks, crackers, bread, toast, and muffins are just the beginning. As with the substance to be spread you can get really creative. For the first experience avoid things that will fall apart with a lot of pressure. If there's a food you want the children to try but you think it might not be a huge hit, use it as the base for spreading and you'll get more takers. When the kids prepare the food themselves they're more likely to try it.

- Something to hold the spread: You can put a dab of spread on a plate, but that's hard for first-timers to control. Consider using single-serving cups or even small drinking cups. A communal container is not recommended because of all the licking that's likely.


Allergy Note: Many of the things most people like to spread (like cheese and peanut butter) contain foods children may be allergic to. Tailor your foods to your class so that no one is left out.