Let Them Bake Cake!

Adele's reading "A Gathering of Days" for our homeschool right now. She came across a cake recipe in the book that she wanted to try, so I let her.  We're able to do more of that sort of thing since we aren't working on a homeschool community schedule that demands we finish a certain amount of material in a given week. Now that we're homeschooling solo, we can set our own limits on the week doing more or less, depending on what we want. 

In general, I'm letting the girls do more cooking and baking now, but not only that, I'm also asking/ assigning them to cook or bake something consistently as part of of their chores or schoolwork, depending on how the recipe fits into our day.

Looking back on the years homeschooling their older sister, I wish I had allowed her to cook and bake more, but she had so much homeschool work to do in a certain amount of time to be ready for our homeschool community meeting once a week that I couldn't imagine adding cooking or baking to her schedule. It would have been cruel to add more. 

But she might have been more prepared for adult life with more consistent practice. Though she is cooking and baking well anyway. She made black bean soup and tomatillo salsa for the family just a few days ago. So, as it goes, one can always learn things later, of course. 

But I would have had more help with the cooking and baking once she had learned to cook. That's the thing about Mom insisting on doing it herself. Mom ends up being the only who can do stuff, and that's no good for Mom or anyone else. 

So that's been one of the greatest blessings of letting go and letting the younger girls get in there and cook and bake (and make messes) in the kitchen more- there are simply more cooks and more baked goods in the house! And the more often they do the same thing, the better they get at it, and the easier it is on me, because the messes usually get smaller and smaller as they become more experienced.