Summer Goals

Well the kids finally got out of school on June 21st. Ahh, the lazy days of summer. It's great for about 2 days and then I start going crazy. Well I decided this year to have the kids set some summer goals for themselves in our FHE. I had them imagine what they wanted to be like and what they want to be doing in five years. Then I had them write/draw a picture of themselves in five years. It was too funny. Kaitie even went so far as to list who she was going to be dating. Ummmm, in five years you'll be twelve. Dad's not letting you date till your twenty-five....give or take a year. I'm going to keep them to show them in five years. We talked about how you won't accidentally become that person, you'll have to set goals and make choices to become that person. I found a cool quote by Dale Carnegie that said something like, If you aren't actively becoming the person you want to be, you are automatically becoming the person you don't want to be. Then I gave each kid a paper with the following:

This summer I want to

read....

learn how to....

make....

etc.

They did a great job setting some goals for the summer, and they've already achieved quite a few of them. Kaitie's goal was to learn to make cookies by herself. I asked her to decide which cookies she wanted to learn to make. It was a hard choice and she couldn't decide, so she decided to combine her two favorites. Chocolate Chip and Snickerdoodles. She decided to call her recipe...

drum roll please...........

"Snicker Chip Cookies"

I learned that Kaitie is really pretty good with fractions. I didn't know. The recipe called for half of the 1 1/2 cups of flour to be creamed with the butter. I was trying to talk Kaitie through how to calculate it.
Me "So what's half of 1 cup?"
Kaitie "one-half."
Me "What's half of the 1/2 cup?"
Kaitie "one- fourth of a cup."
Me "Good job Kaitie! So you'll need 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup of flour."
Kaitie (without hesitation while rolling her eyes) "Which is 3/4 cup."
Okay, so I guess you don't really need help. Sorry.

Kaitie carefully rolled all her cookies in cinnamon and sugar while Ian quietly admired her. While I took her picture, Ian took advantage of her distraction to get what he had been waiting for..... a bite of her cookie dough. Shhhh.

Fresh from the oven!

The sweet smell of success!

Kaitie appointed a taste test panel of Rachel and Ian who both gave her "Snicker Chip Cookies" a big thumbs up. She wrote down her recipe in her best 7 year-old handwriting so she'll always have it. Way to go Kaitie.