Make your own book at home with Rachael!
I go into detail of the simplest tasks so that your children can watch this and create along with me. I hope you have some basic art materials, and although this is not a fancy or novel project, I hope it inspires you to take it in other directions! Your children are usually very excited about book-making, and are pretty independent with portions of it! Have fun and maybe post a pic of your books!? Miss you all! XO Rachael
Helping Young Children Through Coronavirus Crisis.
Thank you to LCC parent and licensed master social worker Emily Kohler for sharing this helpful and important resource with us. https://zerotothrive.org/covid-19/covid-19-kids/
Angela's Pizza Recipe
A rainy day (or any day!) is a great time to make your own pizza. This recipe is from our own extraordinary cooker, Angela-la, is an LCC classic and offers some alternatives if you don’t have the ingredients to make your own dough. Post your pizza making and pizza party photos in the comments and/or tag us in your posts! We’d love to see your creations.
Materials need
2 cups of warm water (at least 110 degrees)
1 Tb olive oil
1 pinch of salt
1 Tb yeast
5 cps of flour
2 cups pizza sauce (we add extra Italian herbs to make our sauce extra flavorful)
16 oz mozzarella, shredded
Your favorite toppings!
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl, mix flour, salt, and yeast. Add olive oil and water. Stir, stir, stir. Coat your hands and your helper’s hands in olive oil and knead the dough. The dough should be a little sticky. You can also knead in a little water if it is too dry or flour if it is too wet. Sprinkle flour on your workspace so your dough doesn’t stick to your counter.
Spray a pizza pan or baking pan with oil. Often we “paint” the pan with a pastry brush and a splash of olive oil.
Roll out the crust in the pan to your desired thickness. I roll it thinner at school. Poke with a fork. I like to invite kids to make a pattern. It can be simple as making rows. Set the dough someplace warm for 8 minutes. Check it out…it will rise!
Place dough in the oven for 5 to 10 minutes. Once it is partially cooked, remove from the oven. Pizza crust and pan will be hot! Let it cool to keep your little helper safe. While the crust cools, prepare your pizza toppings and set them aside. Get some extra spoons to spread the sauce around.
Once the crust is cool, drop pizza sauce onto the crust. Encourage your helper to cover the whole crust.
Next, my favorite part, sprinkle the mozzarella all over. Arrange and sprinkle toppings. Cook in oven for 12-18 minutes. Enjoy with your family!
*La La's notes:
In February, we tried broccoli on pizza. (The idea emerged from play one morning in our common's house area) Many kids tried it and some loved it! I highly recommend broccoli, sweet peppers, red onion, and feta).
I love spinach on pizza! To get it to cook as fast as a pizza lightly spray or brush spinach with olive oil.
Pitas, english muffins, bagels, french bread, and naan bread can be used as pizza crust, too!
This dough can easily be shaped into individual size pizzas so everyone can make their favorite. Any extra pizzas can be frozen for later. It is fun to make small snack size pizzas with a variety of toppings, too!
Play-Based Learning at Home
These are some great tips about play-based learning at home with your toddler and preschooler (and really can apply to older kids too): https://parentingfromtheheartblog.com/facilitate-play-based-learning-at-home/
