Winter Break Activities - Baking Cookies and Scrabble

Neil had 2 weeks of school break for the holidays. If we let him decide, he'll be happy spending most of his time the iPad playing Minecraft or watching Youtube videos of people playing Minecraft. So we had to turn his attention to more worthwhile activities. He's read some of the books we borrowed from the school library and he also completed Eye Level worksheets. He also attended 2 days of karate sparring camp which was from 10AM - 2PM.

But we also introduced him to two new activities - Scrabble and baking cookies.

Baking Cookies
At school, they made these pre-mix of cookie ingredients and brought them home for Christmas. We simply added butter and eggs before baking.

Neil posted the picture below to his Instagram account. I love his captions: "I made those cookies on a cookie sheet. I made those with my mother."

Finished product! We all liked the cookies. While sweets would normally sit on the shelf for weeks at our house, these were gone in less than a week.

We baked the first batch for Christmas and did it again for New Year. I'm not an avid baker so this is something new for me as well. I'm glad to report that it's really quick and easy and something we could do again anytime we feel like it.

Scrabble
I also introduced Neil to Scrabble. He's naturally interested in words so I was hoping he would easily understand and enjoy the game. We bought the Retro set and it brought back memories of playing the game with family when I was young.

For the first game, it was all about learning the rules. After two days, he asked if we could play again (which really pleased me!) so we tackled scoring. He sat through ~2 hours on both occasions.=)

Our first game.

He posted the picture below on his IG: "Today my mom and me played with my second scrabble game, and my mom won the second scrabble game! I got 264 points and mom has 287 points! My scrabble was great! Mom posted my first scrabble game - see mom's picture."

He also posted our scorecard: "This is the back of a printed paper which is folded. I and my mom put our scrabble board game scores on the folded paper - we told our scores at the first second scrabble board game photo - we didn't told my scores at my first scrabble game. At my first scrabble board game, we played up to 10:00 and after that, my mom said time flies when your having fun."

Looking forward to more Scrabble games with Neil.

Comments

  1. marzJanuary 4, 2016 at 1:37 AM

    Yey to baking! Cupcakes are as easy as cookies too :)
    Nice that Neil is enjoying Scrabble, it's another activity away from the gadgets =)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Filipino Friday 3: Reading Habits and Book Formats

Image
Reading Habits and Book Formats . Where and how do you read? Can you read anywhere and everywhere, or do you need a certain place/mood/state of mind to get reading? Do you read more in the morning or at night or any minute that you can? Where and how do you usually read? Are you exclusively for print, or do you go for ebooks more than print? Have you ever tried audiobooks? I am old school.  Even as most books now have digital versions, I still prefer the physical, ink-on-paper variety.  I like holding a real book, flipping the pages and being able to see my progress based on the thickness of read/unread pages.  Somehow, I feel more engaged and focused reading a physical book vs. from a gadget. I very rarely reread books so most of my collection just sit on the shelf after I'm done with them.  I feel it's a waste of precious trees if they are not shared with others.  So I started a Google doc at work where the team can list down their collections and anybody interested in
Read more

Trivia and Reading

Image
I am currently reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and I am inspired.  It’s about the author’s year-long quest to be happier.  It’s purposeful and practical and has lot of tips that I can apply or have started doing. Rubin focused on different areas every month and for May, it was Be Serious About Play.  The author was trying to go back to activities she enjoyed as a child. This led me to also think about a favorite childhood pastime, which was collecting trivia.  The Philippine Daily Inquirer used to run a trivia section by Bong Barrameda and I would religiously cut and paste them onto scratch papers, which I would then collate and read again and again.  Nerd zone! Not only that, I also kept a trivia notebook where I researched and wrote down interesting information like areas of study, capital cities, historical figures, scientists and discoveries, everything!  That was fun for me.  I was about to say they were useless info, but not really.  Because of this intere
Read more

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

Image
There is something to be said for collective recommendations like bestsellers list.  I found this title on such list at Fully Booked, read a few pages and decided to buy it.  I was intrigued by the theme of the book which is memory, specifically, how the author started as a journalist covering the US Memory Championships and ended up as a contender in the finals of the same competition one year later. It claims that with proper training, one's memory can be improved to be at par with the top mental athletes of the world.  Memory training has become an esoteric discipline because we practically do not need to remember a lot these days.  Information is very easy to retrieve from electronic devices and what not.  You just need basic search terms and the Google provides the information you need and more. Photo from Rainy Day Books I have to admit I rely on external memory a lot.  I can recall birthdays of my very close family members but outside of that small circle, I have to
Read more