Book Club, Girls’ Edition: “Paris” by Giada de Laurentiis

I always look forward to book club events.  I have a blast planning them and watching the kids learn and interact – but it’s been a long time since I anticipated a book event as much as this one.  Why?  Because

We read

After talking about the book, we started to prepare.  We made chef’s hats out of poster board and tissue paper to get into the spirit of things.  They came out really well!

 I asked each child to bring a French bread and a French cheese to this event, so the next thing we did was to taste it all.  I put small selections of each on platters on the table and asked each child to sample everything.  (I forgot to take a picture before they sampled, but as you can see, they liked their choices and didn’t leave much behind.)  We tried some wonderful new things:  Smoked Gruyere, French sticks, boule, and more.

After that we teamed up for a Jeopardy-style game.  The questions centered around the information found about France and French food from

When the girls were ready, they brought their creations over to the griddle I had preheated for them.  I watched closely as they grilled their sandwiches.  They worked together really well! 

I sliced each sandwich into three pieces and distributed one to each girl.  I passed out the rubrics, and we sampled them one at a time and then shared our opinion via rubric.

In the end, the girls were so excited about creating foods that they wanted to make more, so while they played around with a new French foodie creation, I added up all the points on the rubrics to determine the highest-scoring team.  After sampling their latest creations – which were surprisingly yummy – I announced the winner (the open-faced sandwich team) and passed out their certificates.

We had a lot of fun cooking competitively.  My Big Helper is already dreaming up her next creation.  I can’t wait to sample it!

Don’t they look great in their hats?

Do you let your kids experiment in the kitchen?