Christmas Lesson Plans for Family and Consumer Science
Around here, the minute Halloween is over the Christmas music turns on and everyone starts talking about Christmas. Are you in the Christmas starts November 1st camp?
Teaching holiday foods is a fun way to get your students interested in cooking and learning about cultural dishes. We try to incorporate a little food history and global cuisine into our lessons whenever we can and the holidays are no exception!
International Holiday Food Lessons
Many cultures have different traditional foods that they serve around the holidays. There are even international holiday cookies. We have a Hanukkah Foods Lesson as well as Holiday Foods Around the World Lesson that is a great way to introduce global holiday foods.
Christmas Cookie Exchange with Students
Have you ever been to a Christmas cookie exchange? Every time I get an invitation for a Christmas Cookie Exchange I get a little anxious because the holidays are so busy and making a ton of cookies on the weekends is not my idea of a good time. But…it’s a great project for students because they enjoy choosing the recipe and having others taste their cookies. We show a slideshow on the most popular holiday cookies as well as a cookie exchange project.
On the day of the exchange, have your students display their cookies and the recipe they used. You can hand out little baggies for students to take a cookie from each tray home (depending on how many cookies and students you have). Students can enjoy a variety of cookies this way. You can even invite other teachers to bring their favorite cookies in and contribute to the exchange.
Let’s take a look at some cookies and recipes for a cookie exchange with your students:
1- Gingerbread- There is nothing quite like gingerbread old-fashioned cookie recipes. The taste is so unique and a lesson in itself!
Have your students spend a day making dough to refrigerate for rolling the next day. Our favorite recipe that works well with the kids is Sally’s Baking Addiction Recipe.
You just have to make sure you have molasses which isn’t always a pantry staple.
2- Sugar Cut-Outs– Once you make a big batch of this dough it is a fun lesson on the rolling dough and cutting out shapes. Here is our favorite sugar cookie cut-out recipe that you can download. We use these cookie cut outs because you get a lot of them for only $10.
3- Pretzel Cookies- If you want something easy for beginners or special education students, pretzel cookies are great. Here is a recipe for these. These are also excellent gift options if you make little bags of them for the staff or student’s families.
4- Chocolate Crinkle Cookies– These are delicious and has students using cocoa powder. Here is a good recipe for them.
6- French Macarons– These are light, meringue-based cookies. They are made with egg whites, sugar, almond meal and food coloring. They were introduced to France by Italy during the Renaissance. You can have fun with holiday colors with these. You will need fine almond flour to make these which you probably don’t have laying around the kitchen.
