3/10/2008

Book and a Snack--Sparkly Strawberries

Featured Book:
The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear by Don Wood



My girls LOVE this book and I'm featuring it at our preschool this week. I already made some strawberry-shaped sugar cookies but thought they would have lots of fun with this sparkly treat courtesy of Family Fun. You could also use Sparkly Strawberries for a fun "S" snack.







Sparkly Strawberries
1 pint fresh strawberries
1/4 cup colored sugar
4 ounces softened cream cheese
2 teaspoons confectioners sugar
4 teaspoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Step 1 Wash the whole berries and pat them dry with a paper towel. Fill a shallow bowl with colored sugar (you can buy this at the grocery store or mix your own by stirring two drops of food coloring into 1/4 cup of sugar).
Step 2 In a mixing bowl, blend the cream cheese, confectioners sugar, milk, and vanilla extract with a fork until smooth and creamy. Add more milk if needed to achieve the desired consistency.
Step 3 Holding the berries by their stems, your kids can dip them into the cream cheese mixture, roll them in the sugar, and enjoy.

I am teaching this book at preschool this week, so I though I'd share my lesson plan if you'd like to use it sometime.
Read Story
Talk about what the mouse did. How do you feel when you share?

Activity:
Strawberry Hunt—take pink plastic easter eggs and decorate to look like strawberries (use a sharpie to make seeds and either color green on the top or glue on a piece of green felt). Fill with a couple jellybeans and let the kids hunt for them. Explain that we are going to share them just like the little mouse. Then, put them all in ONE basket and share evenly with everyone at snack time.

Snack:
Strawberry-shaped Sugar cookies
Sparkly Strawberries (recipe above)
String cheese

Craft:
Print out “Sharing makes me Berry Happy” coloring page (you can download the one I made here). After they are done coloring it, punch a hole at the top, tie to a ribbon & make into a necklace to take home.

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