We hit the ground running this week!  The Mountain Lions returned from the break refreshed, excited, and ready to jump right back into baking.  Our field trip and all the excitement leading up to it, as well as small group baking challenges that fostered independence and creativity in our students were the highlights of the week.  We will be finishing our baking project in the next month.   In the weeks to come, we will be spending time reflecting on all that we have learned and experienced during the project as well as writing our own book, “The Delicious School Bus,” inspired by the Magic School Bus books. Since the beginning of school, we have explored many ingredients, recipes, baking techniques, and a wealth of related academic skills and content.  We have also explored the social-emotional aspects of baking, such as baking and working together with friends and family and experiencing the intrinsic value of preparing and sharing good food.  We have enjoyed approaching baking with creativity and excitement as well.  We are looking forward to digging deep with interviews with each student during class time in the next few weeks and meeting with parents during conferences to share what your child has worked on and learned during the project.  We hope you are looking forward to our project night on February 5^th and 6^th when we will share and celebrate our first major project as a Pre-K community.

On Monday, we received a letter from Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus books.  She rocks!  She heard we were studying baking, and wrote us a special note to tell us that we were going on a surprise field trip soon.  She gave us a hint to help us figure out where we are going. “Hint #1: The place is warm. It is in Teton Valley, and someone that loves you lives there.”  We wondered where we could be going.  Here are some of our ideas: 

Well…it is not warm outside.  Houses? (Elli)

The desert is a warm place away far away. (Rowan)

Mountains and desert. (Bennett)

Inside.  Maybe Mom and Dad houses? We are going to a place where we bake. Caitie’s house? (Dylan)

Maybe Salt Lake City? Is it Laurel? (Lily)

Inside pool? (Laila)

Brooks’ house? Ava’a house? It could be anyone’s house. (Willa)

There is snow outside, so it is cold. (Woods)

Bakery #2? We need a map. (Carly)

Candy Land? Where Ms. Frizzle lives? There are no magical real towns. (Leo)

Toystore? But no one lives in a toy store. (Connor)

Is Laurel pretending to be Ms. Frizzle? Are we going to her baking house?  We should ask her.  Is there a Teton desert? (Owen)

Caitie’s house. (Willa)

I bet our bus smells delicious. (Cadence)

We are going to an island. It is always warm there. (Murphy)

Erin loves her. Her house? (Abigail)

I think we are going to a store (Brooks L)

Candy Land. Is that in Teton Valley? (Cash)

On Tuesday, we received another letter!  This time, she gave us a hint about what we would be baking on our trip.  “Hint #2: It tastes sweet, the batter is sticky, and you will make many of them.”  Here are some of the ideas of what we could be baking:

Cake! (Dylan & Carly)

Gum drops (Murphy)

Cookies (Brooks H)

Gingerbread (Willa)

Bacon (Jessie)

Muffins (Elli)

On Wednesday, “The Friz” wrote us another letter.  This time, our hint was: “The person who lives at this place looks like she has eaten too many cookies… but she has something else in her belly that is not cookies!” At first, many students thought we were going on a trip inside Erin’s belly, until we realized there is already someone there, and we were actually going on a field trip to her house to bake!

On Thursday, we went on our trip to Erin’s house.  We started with a tour of the house and visited the different rooms including the baby’s room where the baby will sleep when she is born.  This was helpful for students because when Erin is on leave, they will be able to picture where she is and what she is doing.  If she is not at school, it is because she is with her baby.  We met her silly cat Guy Noir (who has three legs and no tail) and her even sillier dog Otis (an overly friendly black lab mix). We baked oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies using a family recipe from Erin’s grandma, each student taking turns to add ingredients and make the cookie dough into round cookie balls to bake in the oven.  In the living room, we talked about why baking with friends or family is much more fun than baking alone. We also talked about how good it feels to give someone something that we have baked, or to give them a nice picture or letter.  So, we worked on writing notes to people we love to make them feel good and smile…just the way a nice, warm, gooey, fresh cookie makes us feel.  We hope you enjoyed our notes!  Many students tried writing letters that they do not typically try, such as the names of friends or the words “cookie” and “love.”  We decided that even though our “Delicious School Bus” doesn’t turn into anything like the Magic School Bus does, our “Ms. Frizzle” teachers do have special winter driving powers and we liked their baking dresses.  When we write our “Delicious School Bus” book about our adventure on Thursday, we might say that we were flying a plane on clouds and marshmallows!  We are excited to go again on Monday to Erin’s house. 

Here are some thoughts and insights about our trip.  We asked the students: What did you like about our field trip?  Who do you want to give a cookie to?

I liked smelling the batter in the mixer.  I like to bake with friends because it makes the cookies smell better. I’ll give a cookie to Owen and he’ll give one to me. (Carly)

I liked pouring the sugar in. It is fun to bake with friends. I’ll give a cookie to Mom. (Woods)

I liked the smell of the batter. I like to bake with friends because sometimes I don’t know about all the ingredients. I’ll give my cookie to my sister. (Elli)

I liked seeing Erin’s cat, Guy. I like to crack the eggs with friends because I crack it so well. I’ll give a cookie to Murphy. (Marleigh)

I liked putting the raisins in. I like to give my friends the cookies I make. I’ll give one to Willa. (Laila)

I liked making the cookies. I haven’t made cookies at a friend’s house before. It is more fun to bake with friends. I’ll give a cookie to Brooks H. (Ava)

I liked to make the cookies. I want to give a cookie to Ava. (Brooks H)

I liked Otis. I would like to give a cookie to Willa, Carly, & Dylan. I’ll make a big cookie sometime and then I will break it into three pieces. (Owen)

I liked baking on the trip. I like to bake with friends because we take turns. I want to give cookies to Marleigh, Laila, Murphy, and Owen. I think I need to make more cookies to give to all my friends. (Willa)

I liked seeing Otis, Guy, and baking cookies. I saw the baby’s room. I like baking with friends because sometimes with no grownups, you can make your own recipe. You pop it into the oven and you eat it, and let your friends who didn’t bake it have a taste. I’ll give a cookie to me and to Owen. (Dylan)

This week, we proposed a real world challenge to the Mountain Lions: How do you make a cake or bread without a recipe?  Imagine it is someone’s birthday and you want to make them a cake, but you have lost your recipe.  What do you do?  On Tuesday, Dylan, Woods, and Elli created a new chocolate cake recipe, choosing from the ingredients and supplies we had on hand.  They wrote the recipe, estimating the amount of each ingredient they would need. They kept in mind their previous baking experiences and used their knowledge of baking, tastes, and how ingredients interact with one another to create their recipe.  After the cake came out of the oven, we tasted it.  It had a wonderful flavor, but it was too crumbly.  As a class, we came up with a few ideas for how to fix our cake and make it better the next time:

It is too crumbly. (Elli)

Maybe we should put in more water. (Woods)

More yogurt. (Owen)

More cold water. (Smith)

Maybe some cream? (Brooks H.)

On Wednesday, Leo, Lily, and Rowan followed the cake recipe made by our friends the day before and made a few changes to make it less crumbly.  We added more yogurt, vanilla, and put in less cocoa.  It was “not too crumbly and very yummy” (Owen).  Our cake is a little lighter than a brownie.  Feel free to try this recipe at home!

Chocolate Chip Cake

By Dylan, Elli, Woods, Lily, Leo, & Rowan

Mix together the dry ingredients:

2 C flour

1 t salt

1 C sugar

½ C cocoa

1 t baking soda

½ C chocolate chips

Mix together the wet ingredients:

2 eggs

1 stick of butter, melted

1 t vanilla

½ C oil

½ C water

1/3 C plain yogurt

Combine the dry and wet ingredients.  Mix until blended.  Put into a greased cake pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. 

On Friday, Owen, Cash, Abigail and Henry took on another baking challenge: How can we make bread without a recipe? They thought long and hard about what we learned when making bread so many months ago.  They talked which ingredients are needed, and what we learned about yeast through our experiments.  They recalled that yeast needs warm water and something sweet to make it work and make the bread rise.  They took turns writing down a recipe, estimating the amount of each ingredient needed, and then making the bread.  We were pleased to see that the dough did rise!  We even remembered how to roll the dough into small snakes and braid the loaf, which was pretty tough.  The braid was a little long, so we made a bread wreath instead of a loaf.  A few students were still around at the end of the day when the bread finally came out of the oven, (we saved some, don’t worry!) and we realized that one key ingredient was missing…the salt!  Next week, another group of students will review the recipe and try to fix it to make the bread even better. We look forward to sharing the finalized recipe with you.  For the teachers, it is incredibly fun to watch the students work in small groups and take on these challenges.  We are incredibly impressed, though not surprised.  The Mountain Lions are knowledgeable and creative bakers!  Each child will have a turn to work in a small group to create or refine a recipe, using all the knowledge they have gained throughout the project and practicing the skills of critical thinking, teamwork, and creativity.  We look forward to sharing more about these baking challenges with you next week.

We had another exciting and productive week: we had students continuing the small group baking challenge; the classroom restaurant was bustling with new recipes of steak dinners and smoothies; we began our Magic School Bus inspired book about baking, “The Delicious School Bus”; and the roads and skies finally cleared enough for our last class to go on their field trip to Ben and Erin’s house… what a special treat! This was truly a wonderful field trip to conclude our project and really get into why baking with friends and family is special, and why having shared experiences is so important to our growth, development, and most importantly, our happiness as individuals and a class. Being at Erin and Ben’s house allowed us time to get cozy and be warm, share hugs and laughs, write letters, play outside, and make cookies from a recipe Erin learned from her grandmother. It was special that Erin was able to share the delicious oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookie recipe from her family, just as so many of the Mountain Lions had the opportunity to do earlier this year during Grandparent’s Day. We’re really coming full circle!

We’re nearing the end of our baking project. As we wrap up our baking challenges and get more inspired each day as to what our book should look like, which recipes it needs, how to include our entire cast of characters, the importance of which tool for what job, and most importantly, how we’re going to share it with the world! Beginning on Monday, we’ll be having parent-teacher conferences, and we are so excited to share how much we’ve learned and what fun we’ve had during this project! This will be a sneak peek into your child's experience in the classroom, and what our project has been all about before Project Night on February 5^th and 6^th.

After a long wait, we finally were able to take our field trip in the “Delicious School Bus” to Erin and Ben’s house!  We visited the different rooms in her house including the baby’s room where the baby will sleep when she is born. “Erin’s Ben” read books to friends and helped dig snow forts and slides for the Mountain Lions to play on outside on the gigantic snowbanks.  We met her silly cat Guy Noir and her even sillier dog Otis.

We baked oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies using a family recipe from Erin’s grandma. In the living room, we talked about why baking with friends or family is much more fun than baking alone. We also talked about how good it feels to give someone something that we have baked, or to give them a nice picture or letter.  So, we worked on writing notes to people we love to make them feel good and smile…just the way a nice, warm, gooey, fresh cookie makes us feel. Many of the Mountain Lions worked on incorporating project words into their letters like “baking” and “cookie” along with feel good words like “love”, and “hugs”. Here are our warm-hearted highlights from the field trip, along with who we decided to make a card for:

“My favorite part was playing on the snowbanks. I made a cupcake card from my mom.” –Rowan

“My favorite part was making the cookies. I made a card for Willa because we are nice.” –Lily

“Making cookies was the best. I made a card for Lily.” –Owen

“Playing with Connor was favorite. I made my card for my mom.” –Brooks L.

“Playing outside at Erin’s house was my favorite part. And cookies. And the cards. Caitie, I can’t decide! I made a card for Erin and my mom and my dad.” –Dylan

“Jumping in the holes that Ben made for us! That was so fun! And I made my card for Erin.” –Henry

“When Ben made holes for us. I made a card for my mom and my dad.” –Leo

“Making the cookies! I made my card for Abigail and Willa.” –Laila

“Making cards for Willa.” –Abigail

This week we really got the wheels turning on our “The Delicious School Bus: Inside Baking” book. We’ve started thinking about the most important parts of our baking projects, and have been leafing through the collection of daily documentation from the first four months of school to help us get some ideas and remind us of all of the things we’ve done! We have baked so much, and used so many tools, so you might imagine all of the ideas we have fluttering about in the classroom. Here are some of the many imaginative, magical thoughts of what we would like to include in our book thus far:

“We get on the bus and then turn into little gingerbread men. And then we play in our gingerbread treehouse. And then the roof gets ripped off and someone tries to eat us!” –Owen

“I want there to be a mouth. It should be pink. It should be eating the cake. It should be a happy mouth. The flavors should be us and our happy mouths!” -Laila

“I want to do the tastes. I want to do sweet. It could be Laila’s happy mouth.” –Abigail

“A school bus that has tables. People can sit in there like it is a bus bakery.” –Leo

“I want them to eat for lunch. I want them to eat our pizza. I also want to see them at morning meeting reading a book. And lunch boxes in their cubbies.” –Henry

“Butter. A stick of butter in every recipe. We made butter with Emily.” –Dylan

“The pancake dough. Water. Milk. The recipe! For the pancakes! It is so important because it was so good and we got to eat it.” –Bennett

“The bottles with the gloves and water and yeast and different kinds of sugar. The yeast is good because it’s what makes the bread grow and bake all yummy. There should be pictures of giant balloons with yeast inside the book!” –Carly and Dylan

“Making bread. So we get to know what’s missing. You try and try again to make it taste good. 460 should be in the book. We learned about bread there so ours can be better. And the flattening and kneading, that’s real, real important. It has to be in the book.” –Leo and Henry

“Baking with Ty. Watching the yeast. Write about yeast. It helps us make bread. That’s important, Caitie. I want to draw a picture of a yeast guy, can I do that?” –Rowan

“Cupcakes with Nana. It was fun and yummy. I want to make picture of a cupcake. We need pictures from that day with the frosting.” –Abigail

“Water and mixers in the table. The mixer is my favorite. It’s important because there are small ones and big ones for different jobs.” –Connor

“Bread and snacks. Both of those are what we need in our book. Yeast is most important. I want to write about yeast. The yeast we put in is how bread is getting made.” –Cash

On Wednesday, our last baking challenge occurred! We had a small group of students decide between the chocolate cake, the braided bread, and the oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies. This expert group of bakers decided they wanted to take on the chocolate cake. They grabbed the recipe their peers had diligently worked to perfect two weeks ago and started baking. The Mountain Lions worked on sounding out all of the ingredients in the recipe and followed the steps very carefully. They thoughtfully and methodically measured out each ingredient and added it to the bowl, to create a beautiful chocolate chip chocolate cake.

However, the question remained: What should we do with the last cake? We knew this might be the last cake out of the Mountain Lion kitchen. Should we enjoy the fruits of our labor? Should we share it? One Mountain Lion thought we should give it to someone who had given us a lot, but had received nothing in return… a very selfless and thoughtful concept!

The back story:

Ben and Erin were so gracious to let sixteen Mountain Lions come in and explore and bake in their home, and play on their high, high snow mountains! Many Mountain Lion highlights from the field trips came in the form of enjoying having Ben read to them, or appreciating that Ben made us snow slides and dug holes in the snow for us. However, Ben didn’t get any of the 3 dozen cookies we made at his home! The Mountain Lions recognized this, and being the wonderful class that they are, they thought it would be a nice gesture to give Ben our last group baking challenge goodie! Erin and Caitie are over the moon about how thoughtful and selfless the Mountain Lions are in their quest to being expert bakers, and as it turns out, expert humans.

So what?

So, the Mountain Lions devised a plan, with a little help from Erin and Caitie. Coincidentally, Thursday was Ben’s birthday, which gave us more reason to celebrate Ben’s kindness. In class on Thursday, we completed the cake by making a vanilla buttercream frosting, and topped that with chocolate chips! Chocolate on vanilla on chocolate… how can you go wrong? The Mountain Lions came up with a plan to get Ben to school. Surely he would have to come to school if something was broken! Dylan and Owen called Ben and told him one of the shelves he helped build this summer had fallen down and we needed his help to fix it. He said he would be over around 1:30pm with his power drill and he would fix it for us.

When Ben arrived at school, we were all huddled in the mudroom waiting for him. When we walked in, he seemed surprised to see us all! He walked into the classroom and was surprised to see no broken shelf. He walked back out to the mudroom and Erin showed him the cake and the Mountain Lions sang him happy birthday! We all enjoyed a piece of cake with Ben, he thanked us for our generosity, and he headed to the mountain for work. The Mountain Lions just could not stop giggling! We had about half a cake left, and some Mountain Lions decided Thursday was a good enough reason to share pieces of delicious cake with other TVCS teachers. Away a few Mountain Lions went on a cake delivery! It felt good to see so many surprised and appreciative faces.

In addition to completing our last small group baking challenge, reflecting on the project for Parent- Teacher conferences, and interviewing students about artwork, we also found some time to work on our "The Delicious School Bus: Inside Baking" cookbook. We talked about the various stages our book will go through. Right now, it is a rough draft. The Mountain Lions found a couple of mistakes which we were able to fix... for example: the text of our book mentioned three leavening agents. But we know from our research and our holiday song that there are actually four leavening agents! We're also making sure the recipes in the cookbook match the recipes we created and wrote in class. We're starting art on the pages one day, letting it simmer, and seeing how we feel about it when we come back to it a day or two later. How do we feel about the picture now? Does the picture match the text? Can we add more? Should we take something away? Are all things we're thinking about. Finally, we talked about how every book needs a conclusion... how should our book end? This is something we have a lot of ideas for, and it might have to go to a vote to decide how to really conclude it! Next week: conclusion, dedications, pictures. 

We spent the first part of this week making a big decision: What should we bake for Project Night? Our choices, everyone unanimously decided, should be the three student-made recipes: Bread, Chocolate Chip Cake, and Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Raisin Cookies. On Monday we started the voting process! Perhaps not surprisingly, Chocolate cake took an early lead, and in the lead it remained. The final count was braided bread with 2 votes, chocolate cake with 13 votes, and oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies with 2 votes.

Voting is an important, decision-based, democratic way of deciding on something. Giving the Mountain Lions the opportunity to each write their own name and cast their own vote gives them ownership over decisions that are made in our classroom. It is crucial, not only in the decision making process to have a voice, but for each student to make their own decisions without bias from their peers. Therefore, as teachers this week, we asked each student why they decided to vote for their preferred baked good… so as to weed out any “because that is what everyone else voted for” votes. We want to be sure the Mountain Lions know each individual vote is important, and their opinion matters.

In addition to our decisions, other important pre-literacy and pre-math factors align here. Writing our names and labeling our graph are important to pre-literacy. We see our friends’ names on the wall and work to learn new letters and sound them out. Graphing, sorting, and counting are essential pre-math and math-related exercises we can do on a daily basis now that our graph is right next to where we have Morning Meeting and Closing Meeting. We can easily look at, see, and reference the graph during meetings and project time, and the Mountain Lions have enjoyed seeing each other’s recipes, names, and pictures on the wall… it’s a hot topic! Which would you want to vote for? Help your Mountain Lion decide what to bake for our Project Night with a voting process!

Voting: What do you want to make for Project Night? Why?

“We should make chocolate chip cake because the frosting is so good.” –Dylan

“I think we should make cake. I didn’t like the bread.” –Lily

“Bread… it’s yummy.” –Abigail

“Cake. I like the chocolate chips, it tastes yummy.” –Willa

“The cake looks so, so good.” –Leo

“I really like cake!” –Cash

“I want to make cake because it will be good. Because I tasted it before and it was so good. It was the best.” –Carly

“It tastes so good!” –Henry

“Cake. It was the most fun to make.” –Gray

“Cake because I want to make some for my Dad. He didn’t get any before.” –Jessie

“Bread. It’s the most fun. I like mixing and folding and smooshing.” –Brooks H.

“Cake because I just like it the best.” –Emmett

“Cookies! Because they are so good and Colin likes them, too.” –Ava

“Cake. It’s pretty. We can make cards and cake for Moms and Dads.” –Woods

After the final tally was made in Morning Meeting on Wednesday, we had to prepare a grocery list. To do this, we had to begin an inventory of ingredients we already have in the classroom, our shelves are so full… did we have everything we needed??? Close, but not quite. It took a lot of jumping and stool-stepping to get all of the ingredients off the shelves to see if we had enough of certain ingredients. We had to measure out flour and sugar because we had some, but were not positive if we would need more. Once our inventory was complete, we made our grocery list.

On Thursday, the Mountain Lions took the grocery list and made a walking trip to the Victor Valley Grocer for the last necessary supplies. Before we had on all of our snow clothes for the wintery trek (we got some fresh turns in on our walk over!), we made sure we had grocery bags and our grocery list. We suited up, and double checked to make sure we had our grocery list, and then triple checked! It’s always a bummer (and potential for mild disaster!) when you get to the store and don’t have your list! (Woods said, “Makin’ a list, check for it twice!”) Once we got to the VVG, we worked together to find the necessary ingredients, some on high shelves, and some on low shelves, and then we went to check out. We felt like secret agents because we didn’t need money to buy our supplies! TVCS has an account, and they pay the VVG monthly, so we didn’t need cash or a credit card to buy our ingredients. We felt very, very special and secretive!

Our cookbook, "The Delicious School Bus" is also coming right along! It’s been an exciting process to be engaged in, with so many ideas to incorporate. We have to be sure all of our recipes are in the book, and that we have all of the steps in the right order, and we must make sure all of the ingredients and amounts are accurate. We must have pictures, dedications, “thought bubbles”, and “light bulbs”, and science facts about yeast and other leavening agents, and “it must be funny”! We have to get a good picture of Erin as Ms. Frizzle, and the words have to be spelled correctly. It’s a long list of things we have to be sure get into the book, but the list is getting shorter and shorter by the day as we check off these requirements.

Another addition we made to our book this week was creating our own The Magic School Bus-inspired Mountain Lion characters. They may look a lot like Mountain Lion bobble heads, but everyone has decided that this certainly counts as the “funny” part of the book. Every time we see our heads on a Magic School Bus style character, we can’t help but giggle! We’ve done a lot of illustrating and “essay” writing to answer important questions we think people might ask about our recipes and we cannot wait to share all of our incredibly hard work with you at Project Night next week!