Baking our ABC's!

My youngest granddaughter will be four in a few weeks.  She now goes to preschool two days a week and is learning her letters, besides the familiar ABC song she's known for a while now. She loves to be in the kitchen with me.  I have her almost every Friday night until mid-day Saturday and each week she asks me what we are going to make. So I thought it would be good to combine a learning lesson with some kitchen fun.  We made sugar cookies in the shape of the letter A.

Attention spans for little children aren't long so I rolled out, cut and baked the cookies ahead of time.  She helped me make the frosting.  While doing so, we were also able to work on her number skills, counting the cups of sugar that go into the frosting. She chose the colors she wanted the frosting to be (I let her choose four and white!) I put the frosting in squeeze bottles to make it a little easier for her, put out bowls of sprinkles and candies and we got to work!

We talked colors, counted sprinkles, talked about what things started with the letter A. She talked about her Daddy & Mommy, her Papa, her upcoming birthday party. She was quite chatty, in fact!

We went swimming first, thus the wet hair!

As evidenced by the frosting on her face, quite a bit went in her mouth!

The highlight of the evening, for me, was later on when we went to our favorite Mexican place for dinner.  She looked at the menu and said "Nana, look an A"!  She then proceeded to point out all the A's she could find.

I had a lot of cleanup to do this morning, including mopping the kitchen floor and cleaning dried royal icing from the cabinets. Not sure we'll be doing the remainder of the alphabet in cookies but it was a fun time playing with the letter A!

The sad part of the evening was when I got out our aprons. My Mom made matching Disney Princess aprons for my oldest granddaughter and I, five or six years ago.  She's now outgrown the apron and the little one wears it. It just seems like yesterday that my big K was wearing the apron! My girls are growing up much too fast!