Pretzels!

Last week, I decided to do a baking activity with both the ladybugs (younger), and dragonflies (older) children. The original plan was that we were going to make banana loaf/ bread, but unfortunately the bananas we had were not ripe enough yet, so we agreed upon making "Soft cheddar pretzels".  The first group up to help was the ladybugs, and boy were they adamant to help. 

First, we had to add in all our dry ingredients, flour, baking powder, a little sugar, and a pinch of salt.  After that we needed some help blending in the margarine, so I offered a hand with the pastry blender (a potato masher is all we could find!) 

The last step was to add the milk and cheese, then roll  it out and divide into strips that would be turned into pretzels! I was really impressed with all the patience the younger ones showed while waiting for their turn, definitely on their way to being dragonflies!

After we baked the first batch up, we realized we JUST had enough for each child, and barely at that, so the next day we doubled it up with the dragonflies group.

Once again, all the children were very eager to help, and took turns really well.  Since we had more ingredients and children in this batch, it took a little longer than the first time,

but lucky for us, we have teachers to finish our job for us if we don't quite finish in time. 

The pretzels were salty and delicious in the end and mostly everyone enjoyed them.

Mr.Castell