Saturday, September 3, 2011

the Night Before the First Day of Kindergarten

So this post is coming after 12 long but good days of school. I finally have a moment to get the pictures together!  The first day of school, I always read The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn.  Then I tell the students that my friend Chester left us a special note and we go on a "Chester hunt" tour of the school.  I put up clues on raccoon paw prints that I printed out.  I make a big deal about how maybe we will see Chester, especially as we follow the last clue back to our room.  While we are out, I have a teacher put a plate of cookies in the room with one final note from Chester.  The last note says something to the effect of "You almost found me but I had to go home.  Now enjoy these kissing hand treats and remember you are not alone!"

All of this is to say that the night before school, I made kissing hand cookies for not just my class, but ALL of our kindergarteners.  That means I made 90 cookies.  I started at 9:00...I didn't realize what a silly idea this was.  The store bought dough is too sticky to roll out easily so I had to make the dough from scratch, then I got ready to roll it out when I realized my rolling pin is missing.  Lost from moving last January I suppose.  So my impromptu rolling pin was a vodka bottle.
Then I was finally ready to start using the cookie cutter, should be easy enough.  If you have never used the kissing hand cookie cutter, let me tell you it's not so easy!  (Or maybe it's just me and I need cookie cutting lessons!)
This is the cookie cutter...cute but frustrating!
 I tried to pick them up to put them on the cookie sheet and the fingers kept breaking or stretching.  Finally I decided to roll it out on parchment paper and peel off all the extra dough, leaving only the cookies on the paper.  Then I baked it on the paper.  But I had to use a knife to help peel all the little bits between the fingers and the heart.

 I finally finished around 11:00, which was sooner than I imagined it would be.  My kitchen was a total disaster and I was not much better (as seen in the pictures below).

However, the kids LOVED the hunt and the cookies so in the end, was the stress worth it?  Yep :)

1 comment:

  1. Okay, I can only laugh at this ~ I've done the exact same thing!! We're ALL crazy. But good for you for getting it done. YAY! And that's the neatest looking little cookie cutter.

    ❀Barbara❀
    Grade ONEderful

    ReplyDelete