Buddies ~ Chuffins

***In September 2011 6 families got together and started Buddies Home School. Each week we meet in each other's home and follow a simple rhythm: movement and music, craft/ baking, snack time, free play and story time. Each part of the session is led by a different family. We are sharing this week's session with you here...***

Our theme for this weeks Buddies session was baking and food. 

After our welcome song I taught the group one of our favourite songs Aiken Drum. It's a really great song to make up your own version of and all the Buddies joined in deciding what food his different bits were made of:

There was a man lived in the moon,

 lived in the moon, lived in the moon. 

There was a man lived in the moon 

and his name was Aiken Drum. 

And he played upon a ladle, a ladle, a ladle. 

And he played upon a ladle and his name was Aiken Drum. 

And his hair was made of spahgetti...

And his eyes were made of popcorn...

And his mouth was made of sausages...

And his cheeks were made of fish...

And his neck was made of carrots...

and so on all the way down to my favourite...

And his toes were made of jam...

After that we talked a little about how flour is milled and we thought we would give grinding our own flour a go.

 I had washed a dried 3 pairs of largish, smoothish stones and I gave the buddies a little handful of oats and they used the 2 stones to grind it as small and as fine as they could.

 It worked pretty well as an exercise...although they did end up just eating most of the oats ;-)

 Then Roisin made chuffins with us. (These are savory muffins but we wanted to distinguish them from sweet muffins, hence the name chuffins).

First the Buddies put on their aprons and put muffin cases in muffin trays

 then they had a turn of sifting flour into a bowl.

 and mixing in grated cheese and small pieces of ham

 we cracked 2 eggs into a bowl

 and added milk

 then everyone had another turn of mixing then plopping the mixture into the cases.

 while they were baking we sent the kids outside even though it was raining.
 Although the pictures don't show it, spirits were very high (as was the noise level) so we thought some fresh air might calm them somewhat.

 it didn't....

 Susan just about held their attention long enough with Guess How Much I Love you... but the boys just really wanted to run around, jump on the furniture and hit each other with their specials and shout...

 Still the chuffins came out lovely and the Benny and Joa gobbled theirs up in the car on the way home.

Phew it was a hard work session though.