Mentor Monday - Planet Cookies

We are in the thick of it with our Planet/Stars/Moon unit. Next week will be Week 3, totally nice to have an extra week to get through all this content. I think this curriculum is fun. I learn something new every year and the kids love soaking up as much as they can with me. I learned that there is to be a replacement telescope for the Hubble sent up in 2015. It was supposed to be this year (which would have been totally cool!), but something must have happened. Another thing is that Pluto is not the only Dwarf Planet categorized in our Solar System. There are four more!
One question I had from this year was how did they manage to get a satellite through the asteroid belt to explore the Outer Planets? Pretty intelligent stuff.

The point of this post was to be about this cool thing one of my parents did for us. So I guess I'll stop babbling about Planets and talk about that now. The second student to leave us this year was going to have his last day on Friday. His mom contacted me and asked if she could bring in some cookies for the kids to decorate as a treat. Never the one to miss out on a teachable moment, I wrote back and said that would be perfect. Could she come during our Science block and we could have them decorate the cookies as planets to create a Solar System model? She agreed.

We had the BEST time. She brought so much frosting, jimmies, sprinkles, and two types of cookies. We talked about how the sugar cookies were better than the oatmeal ones for the Outer Planets because the bumpy ones looked more rocky like the Inner Planets. Content with a twist!

Tried it Tuesday - Cake Pops

As part of my baking duties for my sister's wedding reception up in Maine I set aside some time to make cake pops with her 4 year old daughter. A. was such a big help dropping the balls into the frosting, eating the mistakes, and providing a running commentary the whole time. So I fulfilled my job of keeping her occupied for at least an hour. Yay me!

I made cake pops before using a kit that Jessica Ivey gave me for Christmas. It was a bit of trial using that method when the sticks didn't fit into the holder and I purchased larger sticks than I needed. Plus the shape coming out of the pan looked more like the planet Saturn than a round pop. I mean absolutely no disrespect to the Jivey and love love love my gift. But I wanted to try a different method.

I jumped on the internet and found this recipe from A Beautiful Mess and gave it a whirl. I used a strawberry cake mix and the leftover decorator icing that I added coloring to so I could pipe out some roses for the wedding cake I made. The only thing that I would change about the recipe I used was not to put in 2 CUPS of frosting. I barely used 1/2 cup to  make all the crumblies stick together.

Judging by how quickly these were gone after I put them out, I think they turned out okay. Well, A. certainly enjoyed them.