Those Cinnamon Rolls Again...

Earth Day - Green Watercoloring & Picnics

What a wonderful Earth Day! It is our second "real" day of spring this year - so we brought our classroom outside and snacktime too! We decided to see what we could do with just the color green and just enjoyed the sun!

Sharing our Waldorf Enrichment Day

Today we enjoyed donut making instead of the traditional bread to start off our week. The kids response? "Hey! Why didn't we do this yesterday and all those other days too?"

I enjoy making homemade donuts because we use olive oil in the dough instead of lard and whole wheat flour and all organic ingredients. We use canola oil for frying, which is not ideal but it is better than corn oil or who-knows-what oils they use in the shops! The kids love them and they are the only donuts I can eat without feeling ill :)

I probably already shared this recipe with you but this is my mom's old recipe that we used to make as kids...at that time we used a glass for the donut and a plastic curler to cut out the middle of the donut :)

Before we made donuts we told the story about Red Riding Hood bringing donuts to her grandma and about the little girl and her basket going to the market to sell donuts (another version of “Little Girl and the Milk Pail”)


Grandma’s Donuts (Recipe used in my family since 1934 or earlier)

1 TBS. Yeast
¼ cup water

¾ cup milk, scalded
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup organic pure dried cane juice (cane sugar)
1 tsp. Salt
1 egg
3 ½ - 3 ¾ cup flours (I use WW and a touch of white or other)

You can put all this in the bread machine – wet ingredients first, dry next and yeast last and press “make dough only” OR you can do the following:

Soften the yeast in the warm water
Combine milk, shortening, sugar and salt. Cool to lukewarm
Add one cup of the flour and beat well
Add softened yeast and egg. Mix well.
Add enough of the remaining flour to make a soft dough
Turn out on a lightly floured surface and kneed until smooth and satiny.
Place in a greased bowl and let rise of 1 ¼ hours or until double.
Punch down and let rise again until double.
Roll out the dough 1/3 inch thick (we did this in class)
Cut the dough into shapes and cut a hole in the middle (we did this in class)
Let rise about 30-40 minutes (we skipped this step in class, but if we did it the donuts would be more light and fluffy).
Fry in deep fry oil until slightly browned (375 degrees). Drain on paper towels.
While they are warm frost them with a simple glaze

SIMPLE ORANGE GLAZE (This is MY favorite but we did not do this one in class)

Add 1 tsp. Grated orange peel and 3 TBS. Orange juice to 2 cups sifted confectioners sugar (icing sugar)

SIMPLE VANILLA GLAZE

Add 1 tsp. Vanilla and 3 TBS. Milk to 2 cups of sifted confectioners (icing) sugar.

YOU CAN THEN ADD SPRINKLES OVER THE GLAZE! YUM!

Cheeto Flames

So what do you do when you have one of those nutty health-freak moms that tells you not to eat Cheetoes? And your friend brings a bag over to snack on? And then you have free time to play so you build a fort and of course your fort needs a FIRE! Right? And the FIRE needs flames. Right?

I just went out to take pics of the kids forts and had to share this. It was just too funny!

Kristie

www.TheWaldorfChannel.com

Easy Healthy Snacktime

My favorite time saving idea is "snack trays". I purchase some plastic (they don't come in any other material...do they?) snack trays (usually made for party dips) with lids and I fill them with various healthy snacks and keep them in the fridge and on top of the fridge (the nuts and things). Right now I have about four of these trays FILLED with fruits, veggies, nuts, dried fruits, etc...some have some cheese in them. I took a picture of two of them. I get these trays out every morning for breakfast and every afternoon for snack time. It helps the kids and I get a lot of healthy food into us without too much effort! And since the snack trays are easy to prepare and always ready I don't have any excuse for not eating healthy!

Blessings & Health,
Kristie
www.THEdreamangels.com

Waldorf - Montessori Enrichment Fun

The Montessori kids had two days off school this week so we had two full days of "Waldorf Enrichment" fun with my kids and three others. We did some Chinese Form Drawing (see member's video at www.thewaldorfchannel.com), we did some Chinese Brush painting while I told the story "The Boy Who Drew Cats". Then we did a play about the story.

We made our own pizzas the first day and although I had other plans for day two, the pizza was so popular they insisted on pizza again the next day :)

We played a cooperative game where you read words in other languages off of cards and you have to act out or draw the word so others can guess what you are saying. The game is called "Tower of Babel" and since nobody knew the story (GASP!) I told them the story as well.

We had a lot of fun talking in Chinese, Swahili, Japanese, Russian, Navajo and Greek (The words are sounded out on the card to help the child pronounce it)! We learned that Basketball sounds the same in Russian as it does in English, and that the word for crazy is similar in Greek and in Spanish (most of us speak Spanish). However, the most popular word of the day was "PEE-pee" , the Swahili word for candy. Now tell me....are you EVER going to forget the Swahili word for candy?

In the afternoon we had a coffee-making lesson with the hand-grinder and French press led by Sunii and the kids all had a basic lesson in Su-Jok reflexology. They were amazed and had a lot of questions!

I am offering a download of the Su-Jok reflexology lesson for kids for only $7.50. If you would like a copy of this video please e-mail me at: herbnhome@yahoo.com. You can also purchase the DVD for only $12.00. I will have this DVD avaialable on the website sometime this week. However, you can e-mail me and I can send it to you before I have it listed since I will not be listing things until later this week but I do have the DVD/download ready at the time of this posting.

And I do have to admit I have an ulterior motive in teaching the kids reflexology...it is a GREAT way to get FREE reflexology treatments. Really, the kids are so good at it and they love to practice (LOL).

Enjoy the photos!

Blessings & Health,
Kristie

Winter Snack w/Special Guests

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