Homemade Gingerbread Cake
Last night, I did something different with my Wednesday night class of girls. I decided it would be fun to do Christmas in July. Growing up, my mom would pull out the Christmas dishes in the month of July so we could get some extra mileage out of them. It was always a lot of fun and kind of a silly. My class really loved the idea of bringing Christmas to July and so I set off to plan a Christmasy evening.
The night started off with Christmas Games. We did a Christmas Word Search, A Guess that Carol Game, Christmas Carol Word Scramble and Fill in the 12 Days of Christmas. I gave out prizes as the night went on for whoever got the most answers correctly. We finished the Christmas games with the Left/Right Game. I handed out the last of the prizes and as I read a story, the girls had to pass the presents to the left or the right when they heard the words left or right. It was a lot of fun and in the end everyone walked away with a prize, so it was like Christmas!
As much as I wanted to do a Christmas lesson, I had to continue on with our current unit so I didn’t get behind. There are only so many Wednesday nights left with my class and each lesson is carefully planned so we end our unit in time for the school year and the class transition. So, from Christmas, we popped over to our Self-Esteem lesson.
After the lesson time, we did a Christmas craft which involved decorating a Christmas ornament while listening to Christmas music. I made gingerbread cake for snack from scratch. This was my first time not using the packaged mix and it turned out surprisingly good! I’m never sure when it comes to making cake from scratch if the texture will be just right or the flavoring! I jazzed up the cake by adding whipped cream on top. For a touch of holiday color, I used green and red crystals.
The night was a big hit and the girls told me it really felt like Christmas. One girl mentioned that she was going to ask her parent’s for a present since it seemed so real. I’m not sure how well that was received, but I have to agree, I felt in the holiday spirit. The games and the flavors of the holidays made me wish that it was really right around the corner. I’ll just have to patiently wait now until the real holiday! It was fun to get a jump start on celebrating!
Amy Scott's Thoughts 