kids baking class

What children can learn from the Mouse who wants a cookie!

Little Cookhouse conducted our very first class requiring our 3-5 years old to measure out the ingredients. It was a very good learning experience for us, as we need to work with a lot of ambiguity.

  1. Ambiguity in precision, given that the quantity required for ingredients are typically given in grams. In order to make it manageable for kids so young, we converted it into spoons and cups size. Sound simple? Actually not so, because a cup of liquid is different from a cup of flour or a cup of butter!
  2. Ambiguity in measurements, given that the recipe is now based on tablespoons, and a child may not scoop a full tablespoon as required in our measurement. The consequence, is a cookie that may not turn out to be a cookie….

Fortunately, our little chefs manage it well (with assistance from Teacher and parents of course!), and produced cookies which tasted great, even though there were slight differences in colours, size and even the sweetness.

This, as we explained to parents, is what makes baking a learning process. We can teach children the importance of measurement, that by adding more or less of something, their output may differ. Your ultimate goal is not the creation of restaurant-quality food, but boosting your child’s self-esteem and encouraging independence. More importantly, it’s about having a happy kid who’s excited to spend time working on something and doing it well!

Baking is also about providing early exposure to the child, in terms of measurement, scooping, sieving, which all helps in their numeracy and fine motor skills development. It also presents opportunities to talk about culture, nutrition and values. For instance, parents can continue to engage the child after the class, by discussing about the values from the story ‘If you give a mouse a cookie’.

Parents can ask leading questions like “Will you give the mouse a cookie?”, “Why did you do so?”, “Do you think the mouse is being greedy?”, “Do you think the boy was very kind and helpful, and such an act is something you can also learn from?” etc.

Again, it’s not about arriving at a factually correct answer, but about stimulating the thinking of your little one!

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If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

You probably didn’t know that this book was written in 1985, and is today considered a contemporary classic!

It is so well-received, that Charles Schulz (yes, the Peanuts strips creator!) created 2 strips about it! The series has fans of all ages from all over the world including Japan, where an entire Tokyo city bus was painted with images of Mouse, and First Lady Michelle Obama read the book on the White House lawn during the 2009 Easter Egg Roll! How cool is that!

Author Laura Numeroff has often said in interviews that the idea for the story came to her during a car trip she took with a friend from San Francisco to Oregon. She narrated it as they drove and later wrote it down. The manuscript was passed over by nine publishers before being taken on finally.

The text was interpreted by illustrator Felicia Bond to show the increasing energy of the mouse, with the little boy being run ragged by the end of the story. Bond describes rushing to get the sketches done before leaving town with her boyfriend and that the energy of the mouse evolved from that excitement. She has mentioned on numerous occasions that the little boy in the book was her boyfriend, Stephen Roxburgh, as a child.

If_you_give_a_mouse_a_cookieWhat is the moral of the story? Here are 2 which I learned about.

Firstly, it is that one should possess empathy, respect, and basic manners. Even though the mouse asks for so many things from the boy, he just does it because he does it out of the goodness of his heart. This is a value we need to teach our children.

Secondly, it is how even a seemingly simple task may end up being more complicated than you originally thought, which teaches the importance of setting limits, even on a good deed. This is a lesson parents need to learn, and apply firmly so that our child can learn.

So, should we give a mouse a cookie? Yes, I think we should, but we should also teach the Mouse how to make the cookies so that he will have countless cookies to eat in future!

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