by A. Sc.

Created on: January 13, 2008

Baking can be a great way to spend fun time with the entire family. Everyone loves yummy treats, and making them together can be a perfect bonding experience.

Anyone of any age can help out with at least one part of the project, so your little two year old girl can have as much fun as your twelve year old son.

Baking can also teach important skills to any children in the family. Basic eye/hand coordination, measurements, math, patience, and the rewards of hard work can all be valuable lessons.

Be careful not to make this like school though, the learning should be secondary to enjoyment and family bonding.

To guarantee the baking project IS actually fun for the entire family, elaborate recipes should be avoided. Nobody is going to enjoy the activity if they need to be boiling things to an exact temperature, or mixing complicated measurements.

Remember that anything too easy will bore the older children, and anything too complicated will confuse the younger ones.

Keep the projects easy, fun, and yummy. Bond with the entire family and have a blast. For actual project ideas, try:

* FAMILY COOKIES *

- A really fun baking project for the entire family is baking an entire family! Use gingerbread, sugar cookie dough, or whatever you want, as the base. Create the dough together or go buy some ready-made dough for a super quick activity.

- Just roll out the dough and have each family member cut out a gingerbread man shaped cookie. Each person should either decorate the cookie before or after baking, depending on technique used. Basically just bake the cookie, making two to four cookies per family member.

- Use icing in assorted colors, sprinkles, and candies to decorate the cookie so it looks like the person doing the decorating! Or let each person make a cookie that looks like each member of the family.

- Yellow icing for blond hair and blue "Skittles" for blue eyes! The cookies can be decorated as simply or elaborately as desired, depending on the creators skill and age.

- This is a great way to separate treats and figure out who's had ten cookies and who's only had three. Just make the rule, you only eat cookies that look like you, and the problem is solved. Kids love seeing the entire family in sweet form, and adore making tiny replicas of themselves to munch on.

* KITCHEN SINK CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES *

- Try some delicious chocolate chip cookies with everything in them! Decide what each person in the family loves in the cookies. Make them prepare and add whatever that ingredient

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