Making Muddy Buddies with my Buddy

Today was a slow day at childcare with not a lot of kids.  That made it the perfect day to make some Muddy Buddies.

One of the things we as child care providers need to teach kids is self help skills.  Preparing food for themselves is very high on the list of self help skills so any time we can include kids in meal prep or snack prep we really should.

Today we made Muddy Buddies...Here's the recipe.

3/4 cup butter
1 12 oz bag chocolate chips
1 cup peanut butter

Melt the butter and chips in the microwave.  Stir then add peanut butter and microwave again to melt the peanut butter.  Pour a small box of Crispix or Chex Cereal into a big bowl or brown paper bag.  Pour some powdered sugar over the top.  Close the bag and shake.

Little fingers helped open the butter.  Little fingers opened the microwave.  Little fingers pushed the buttons on the microwave.  We watched the microwave and counted backwards as the cooking time elapsed.

We talked about safety.  We stirred.  We poured.  We listened and carefully followed directions.

So many learning opportunities were right there for us in one simple activity.

We watched as something solid turned into a liquid.

We shook and looked and shook some more.  We had to check to make sure all of the pieces first covered in brown chocolate and then covered in white powdered sugar.

Best of all...we had pride in ourselves for making our own snack.  We even bagged up some up and sent it home so they could share with their family.

I love when learning happens in such a natural way with little to no prep time.