Survival Guide to Baking With Your Kids

Christmas is almost here.  There are still things to wrap, a gift for my nephew that I still have to finish making and last minute shopping.  But when my son asked me to pull out our family recipes and make his great-great grandmother’s pierogi recipe, I couldn’t say no.  It’s a recipe I remember my grandmother making each Christmas growing up and when I was in my early twenties I tried to make it.  It was an epic fail.  So my sister and I asked our grandmother and aunt to teach us how to make them.  We needed to see someone make them and then have them watch us and help us fix what we were doing wrong.  It’s one of those handed-down recipes where you have to add “enough” flour and knead it ‘til it “feels right”.  Perhaps now I could search you tube for a tutorial video, but that day of “Pierogi School” was so much more meaningful.  We learned our family’s recipes from our family. 

However, the idea of cooking or baking with children often seems like a wonderful idea until you are in the middle of the actually doing it.  You know that moment when you wonder what on earth possessed you to do this!  There’s a great cartoon by Amber Dusick of crappypictures.com floating around facebook where the top picture is what you imagine baking with your children will be like – it’s ideal, everyone is smiling and clean… then the bottom picture shows the reality, one child is squirting frosting in their mouth, everyone is covered in sprinkles.  It’s so true!  And it’s painful to watch a three year old make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich never mind roll out dough!  But before you reach for the slice n’ bake consider what is gained from making something from scratch and check out my survival guide below.  

1. Safety First – Remind them about kitchen safety and set guidelines.  For example: when I’m about to open the oven I announce it to my kids and they have to touch the doorframe on the opposite side of the room until the oven door is closed.  When we use any small appliance I remind them that it’s my job to plug and unplug it and any other rules to keep them safe.
2. It’s about the process, not the product – It may not be the prettiest, but letting your child make something without you following behind “fixing” it will give them a sense of accomplishment and show that you have confidence in their abilities. 
3. Show by example - And then let them have a go at it, don’t be afraid to help them if you see something that they can improve on that’s not just aesthetic (like sealing the edges of a pirogues so the filling doesn’t leak out). 
4. Give them one step at a time – If you give a child too many steps at once they will get confused.  Take it one step at a time.
5. Be specific, very specific – When my son was five I asked him to grease a bowl for bread to rise in and he did.  He greased the inside and the outside.  Be very specific.
6. Set aside enough time – Squeezing a batch of cookies in between activities will surely stress you out.  It always takes more time when you have “help” from a child so plan on it.
7. Don’t overwhelm yourself – Cut a recipe in half or put half the cookie dough in the freezer to be baked on the next snow day.  You don’t have to do it all today.  I should have halved my recipe today, but I guess it’s not so bad that we have 75 pirogues in the freezer now.
8. Reinforce math and reading skills -   Let them help you read the recipe and count the amounts of ingredients as they are added.  It’s easier for me to measure it out – obviously, but when I remember what they gain it helps me ease up.
9. Expect some mistakes – Let them crack open the egg, but do it in a small dish so you can
   
   
   easily fish out any pieces of shell.
10. Use the timer to your advantage – You have 8 minutes til this batch comes out of the oven?  See if you can sweep the kitchen before the timer beeps!
11. It’s going to be messy – get over it.  After the kids are in bed pour a glass of wine, turn on some music and do the dishes.  You might also have to wash the floor…and your hair… but it will be ok.

My son thought we had the best supper ever.  He was all smiles.  And you know the reality is probably going to look like the bottom picture on the cartoon, but when you look back on it, you’ll both remember it as the top picture.

Wrapping Paper You Won't Want to Rip

Hand Painted Wrapping Paper

My eldest son tried his hand at making wrapping paper this holiday season.  We tried several methods and decided that the best paper (quick, simple and most beautiful) was stamped with sponges cut into different shapes.  We started with a roll of white butcher’s paper.  First we cut it to fit the package we were wrapping and wrote the name of the person it was going to lightly in pencil.  We flipped the paper over onto a table, protected by a layer of newspaper, and taped the edges and corners of the butcher paper to the newspaper with a small amount of painter’s tape, so it could be easily removed later on.  Then we decorated the paper with layers of stamping.  Below is a list of materials, some tips for stamping with sponges and directions for making the three designs that were our favorites.

Materials:

Roll of White Butcher Paper

Pencil

Newspaper

Painter’s Tape

Paper Plates

Paints

Markers

Kitchen Sponges

Scissors

Q-tips

Small Cardboard Boxes

Foam Stickers

Wet Wipes (handy for any painting/messy project with your child)

 

 

Tips:

1. If your child has a hard time getting an appropriate amount of paint onto the sponge stamp make a stamping pad by dampening a rag or inexpensive washcloth.  Place the damp rag onto a paper or plastic disposable plate.  Squeeze some paint onto the rag and fold to distribute the paint.  This helps keeps globs and drips to a minimum. 
2. Have your child practice stamping on scrap paper or newspaper first to get the feel for it.  The trick is to stamp straight down and pick it straight back up without sliding the sponge or stamp.
3. Start from the furthest edge away from your child and work towards your child so they don’t lean over wet paint reaching for a blank spot. 
4. Always use washable paints and markers when working with small children and keep wet wipes within arms reach.

Snowy Paper

Stamp circles in a random fashion starting with a medium blue.  Add some white to the blue and do another layer.  Repeat this process adding more white paint to the paint mixture  each time.  We also made a stamp with a small cardboard jell-o box and a foam snow flake sticker.  We finished the design by stamping blue snowflakes on the white spaces and light colored circles and white snowflakes on the blue circles.   

Christmas Tree Paper

Stamp green triangles onto the paper and then decorate with colored ornaments made by stamping a q-tip in a variety of colors.  A star shaped stamp made with a star foam sticker would have been nice for a tree topper (as shown in the snowy paper design).

Strings of Lights Paper

Draw some curly stripes in dark green or black leaving space in between for the lights to make the cord.  We used a marker for this but paint and a brush would work too.  If using paint you may want to let the paint dry before moving onto stamps.  Stamp with tear drop shaped sponges.  Utilize your child’s early math skills by having them make up a pattern to repeat so the colors are evenly disbursed.   Once the paint has dried add a squiggle to attach the bulb to the cord.

It took much longer to wrap the gifts since you have to wait for the paint to dry in between and took up quite a bit of table space.  (Every time it was time for a meal we had to check to see if the paint was dry!)  But it was a lot of fun and the few special people who received gifts wrapped in hand painted paper appreciated it.

Art Journaling: Attitude of Gratitude Session 4: Feeling Gratitude Towards God

This week, as we come closer to Christmas Day, we put our focus on feeling gratitude towards God.  We challenged ourselves to harness the feeling of gratitude with God at the center of our meditation and used the following scriptures for inspiration.

original drawing by M. Estes Zywar

Ephesians 5:19
Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord,

Mark 12:30
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

Colossians 3:16
Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.

The breath prayers derived from these scriptures were to inhale on “Seek the Lord” or “Love the Lord” and exhale on “with all your heart” or “Sing and make music” on the inhale and “from your heart to the Lord” on the exhale.

For our stretching portion of the class, Kris Cross led us in a relaxation process called constructive rest position.  During this time we practiced a method of relaxation where we focused on different parts of the body and relaxed our muscles with the help of a metaphor, visualizing our bodies as a sac of sand.  As we focused on each muscle group we imagined the sand pouring out of the sac and the sac collapsing.   

Our closing prayer for this week:

Dear Lord, as we celebrate Christmas we remember what you have done for us and give thanks for all your good gifts.  We pray that our hearts would be full of praise to you.  Lord, let the light that you have put in our hearts shine for the world to see as a testimony to your love and grace.  May we celebrate fully this Christmas as we sing to you with gratitude in our hearts.  -Amen

original drawing by Brookye Keeney

I hope this workshop was a blessing to those who participated and that it helped you take time to breathe, focus on the joys of this season, find gratitude in your lives and sing to God with gratitude in your hearts!  Merry Christmas!

Art Journaling: Attitude of Gratitude Workshop Session 2: Focus on Joy!

For our second week of our Attitude of Gratitude Workshop we challenged ourselves to focus on the joys of the season rather than the stress.  One suggestion for doing this was to make two lists in your journal.  The first listing the things that cause you stress and the second things that bring you joy.  Our hope is that throughout Advent we can spend less time focusing on the stressful things and spend more energy on the joyous.  One person took a different take on this list making exercise.  She wrote things that cause her stress in the first column and then in the second, how to deal with that stress.  This was a great approach and a reminder that the journal is personal.  The theme of refocusing is a jumping off point so express it in a way that is most effective and meaningful to you!  If writing a list is not your style feel free to express your list visually.

The Bible passages used for refocusing dealt mainly with reminding us of Christ which is why we are celebrating to begin with. 

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Matthew 1:23
“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

Psalm 62:1
 ¹ Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him.

The breath prayer used this week was:  “Immanuel” on the inhale and  “God with us” on the exhale.

I hope your journal continues to be a reminder to breathe this season, take time stretch your muscles to relieve tension and focus on what brings you joy!

Our Closing Prayer:

Lord, as we go through this advent season preparing to celebrate Christmas, help us to see you and the true purpose of this season.  Prepare our hearts and clear our minds so that we might not be distracted and discouraged by the noise and busyness.  Let us find joy in this season to celebrate fully with our friends and family. –Amen

Art Journaling: Attitude of Gratitude Workshop Session1 Remember to Breathe!

Original drawing by M. Estes Zywar

A yoga teacher once told me, “If you change the way you breathe you will change the way you feel.”  It is so true.  When I’m stressed I don’t even notice that I’m taking shallow breaths or holding my breath altogether.  But when I am conscience of breathing in a relaxed, even manner it changes how my body holds tension.  I become conscience of my breathing and notice my muscles in my shoulders are tight and I can work on relaxing them.  I breathe and notice my stomach is tied up in a knot and I can release the tension.  Stress has such a physiological effect on our bodies and breathing is a great way to start paying attention. 

For the first part of my four week Attitude of Gratitude Workshop leading up to Christmas I want to start with being mindful of how we breathe.  I started by looking up breathe in the Bible starting with Genesis 2:7 –

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 

Breath is found in Psalm 150:6 –

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.  Praise the LORD. 

 And again in John 20:21-22 - 

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you!  As the Father sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” 

I pasted these verses in my Gratitude Journal. 

I wrote “Breathe” in my journal and doodled around the word while thinking about how I was breathing and working on releasing tension I was holding onto.  There is actually a process for meditative doodling that is called zendoodling or zentangle.  It can be used as a tool for finding a calm state where your mind can be released from stresses and worries and you just focus on the repetitive pen strokes.  My  mother told me about this tool for meditation which she used during her long wait at the airport when traveling to see her father after he had suffered a stroke.  My mother and I also made up some coloring pages for my workshop that people could paste into their journals and color with crayons.  Remember coloring with crayons when you were a kid?  Have you tried it lately?  It can be very relaxing too!

After spending some time in our journals I introduced my group to the idea of a breathe prayer.  It is a concept that has been around for a long time and my husband uses it as a tool for meditation and prayer with parishioners who go on weekly prayer walks in our community.  You take a phrase and repeat it quietly to yourself as you breathe in and breathe out.  For example the most ancient is “Lord Christ Jesus” on the inhale and “Have Mercy on Me” on the exhale.   One that I liked this week was “Be Still” on the inhale and “know that I am God” on the exhale.   Our group warmed up by walking and practicing these breathe prayers before doing a series of stretches led by a professional  dance instructor who is a member of our congregation.

In closing we said the following prayer together.  I hope that everyone participating in our workshop will open their Gratitude Journal this week and be reminded to breathe this holiday season!

Lord, you breathed life into each and every one of us.  Help us not to take it for granted, but rejoice in it; for each breath is a gift. 
Help us to continue to breathe during this season
as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ. 
May we breathe in the sweetness of the Holy Spirit
and exhale tension and stress
Teach us to breathe in the Holy Spirit that we might praise you with each breath. 

-Amen

Art Journaling: Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude this Holiday Season

I’ve noticed during yoga classes that my teacher often directs the students in clearing their minds and focusing on gratitude.  It intrigued me, but I didn’t feel like I really understood why.  I just tucked it in the back of my mind.  Then early this fall I went on a retreat where I attended a workshop.  The person leading the group did an exercise in meditation that focused on the heart rather than on clearing the mind of distraction.  She had us focus on feelings of gratitude to push feelings of anxiety out of the body.  She created a relaxed atmosphere, and then had us imagine that feeling of gratitude being pumped throughout the body and into each cell of our being.  It was incredible how harnessing that feeling of gratitude, even gratitude for something very small, could impact how we felt both physically and emotionally.  Early in November I had an opportunity to make an art journal and do some meditation exercises using visual artmaking.  After these experiences it seemed like everywhere I looked I saw references to the physical effects of cultivating feelings of gratitude.  I kept stumbling on magazine articles that encouraged listing things you are grateful for as you fall asleep at night, writing notes of gratitude, and the simple act of verbally saying “thank you”.  I found research on positive psychology interesting, but also thought that if there are this many articles written about the “pursuit of happiness” clearly it is something that our society is craving. 

Our frantic pace and overwhelming list of obligations are magnified during the holidays.  I love Christmas but find that the joy can quickly be blotted out by the endless pressures of fulfilling the material expectations of the season.  I knew that a friend at my church, who is a dance professor, was interested in teaching a class on stretching and decided to invite her to combine our talents and offer a class to our congregation during Advent.  So we came up with, “The Attitude of Gratitude Workshop: gentle spiritual and physical activities to refresh your weary soul this Advent season.”  I plan to write a blog entry each Sunday night with some of the journaling activities, prayers and ideas to meditate on.  Our hope is that it will give people tools for maintaining a calm, joyful mindset so that the most wonderful time of the year won’t leave us physically worn out and our souls weary.

Directions for making a gratitude journal

Materials:

• 10 sheets of card stock
• scrap of fabric approximately 9”x14”
• ruler
• pencil
• 4 clothes pins
• an awl
• rubber mallet
• magazine or scrap wood
• heavy thread or crochet thread
• large embroidery needle
• 1 large button

Instructions:

1.       Fold 10 sheets of card stock in half and stack inside one another to create a book.

2.       Measure one inch from the top, one inch from the bottom and the center of the fold.  Marking with a pencil.

3.       Line up the fabric cover so it matches up with the edge of the left side of the cardstock (when the cardstock is unfolded and there is an extra couple inches of fabric along the right hand edge.)

4.       Hold the papers and cover together by securing with the clothes pins.

5.       Using the awl poke three holes along the spine of the book where you measured. (if you have a rubber mallet or hammer you can use it to pound the awl through the layers of cardstock and fabric.  Use the scrap wood or thick magazine to protect your work surface.

6.       Cut 2 ½ - 3 feet of thread.

7.       Sew the spine of the book by starting from the outside of the fabric cover through the center hole back out the top hole, in the bottom hole and then back through the center hole from the inside of the book to the outside.  Leave a tail long enough to stretch across the width of the cover and extending a couple of inches. 

8.       Sew the button to the flap extending from the back cover so that you can close the journal securely by wrapping the tail of the thread around the button.