Book Club

We have been holding a summer book club for Courtney and 3 of her friends in the neighborhood.  It's been a lot of fun and this week we read the book "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake."  We always read the book together, talk about it, make the food (cookies, cupcake, muffins, donuts, etc.) then make a craft while the food is cooking.  When the food is finished, we decorate it, eat one and then make plates for our families so they can take home some of what they made.

I always have the girls read one sentence each of the book and, while we are cooking, I have them read the directions themselves.  It really has been a lot of fun to teach them how to read basic cooking directions and how to make things.  They get so excited.

This week we made cupcakes and while they were cooking, the girls (and Ethan because he didn't have a camp this week so he got to participate) made a sand castle.  These were super easy.  I made some sand clay for them to mold and they each brought sea shells to decorate it with.  I had umbrellas from one of Courtney's birthday parties so it was fun to have them use those. 

The way you make sand clay is to mix 2 cups water with 2 cups corn starch in a pan on the stove.  Cook it, stirring constantly, until it thickens.  Then you pour it into a bowl that has 4 cups of sand in it.  You mix with a spoon (I used my hands but it was HOT) until it is all mixed in and resembles play dough.  It worked out great and the girls loved it.  I got the sand at HomeDepot on their "damaged" pallet.  There was a hole in the bag so they only charged me $1 for a $6 bag of sand.  Score!  But I only used a fraction of the bag of sand so I need to put it somewhere.

Courtney's sand castle is on the left and Ethan's is on the right:

 Courtney's creation: