December already! Bring on the cold weather so we can enjoy snuggling up inside with hot drinks, baking and crafting with the kids, and enjoying some twinkling lights on these long dark evenings.
News from the classroom
We’ve been celebrating Sinterklaas in class these last weeks. We baked pepernoten together (recipe below), I added some Sint gluing activities to the craft area, and we all enjoyed singing lots of Sinterklaas songs at circle time.
Pepernoten
It’s never too late to bake pepernoten even if Sinterklaas is now heading back to Spain on his steam boat. So for those of you who would like to try it at home, here is the recipe.
150 g (2/3 cup) butter
135 g (3/4 cup) brown sugar
10 g (2 teaspoons) ’speculaas spices’
250 g (1 1/4 cup) self raising flour
a pinch of salt
4 tbsp milk
Preheat oven to 160 °C (320 °F). Cut cold butter in little chunks and knead through sugar, speculaas spices, salt and self raising flour. Add the milk bit by bit until the dough is smooth and supple. Start making little balls (a bit smaller than a marble). Your kids can help with this: if you give them little pieces of the dough, they will love making the little balls! Line the little balls up on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and flatten them slightly with your thumb (I make two batches). Bake for about 15 minutes until light brown.
Getting ready for Christmas
We have our little Christmas tree ready in the classroom – it’s about 30cm tall and sits on a table where the children enjoy hanging wooden ornaments. I like how the children like to place lots and lots in one place!
Next week we’ll be adding some festive craft into the mix too. Will be fun.
Guest blog post
And if you still have time for one more thing, I’m very honoured to have my blog post about visiting museums with young children featured on The Montessori Bloggers Network. If you missed it before, it’s got lots of fun ideas for making trips to museums interesting for your kids. Follow the link here: http://montessoribloggersnetwork.com/making-museum-trips-fun-young-children/. Yes, that is a cute photo of my kids at the Art Gallery in Sydney aged nearly 2 years and the other just a few months old. I love that shot.
I’m looking forward to a cosy break in Amsterdam. I’ve a list of festive things I want to do like visiting Intratuin to see the Christmas displays, snuggling up with my kids, drinking lots of hot chocolate, and baking lots of cookies!
Have yourselves a great one…