Kids Baking Bread

I am making a purposeful effort to involve the children in as many of the chores that I do as possible. They don't play independently that wonderfully, so the best way I've found to keep them occupied and to avoid fights over sharing is to involve them in my chores. John is at a new "happy helper" phase and Mary is at the "I can do it" phase of a year-and-a-half old. This technique greatly slows down my efficiency at doing chores, but it gives me many opportunities to increase my patience and it builds the confidence and competence of my kidlettes. (I also have a very selfish reason: With as little kid-free time as I get in a day--about one hour at the crack of dawn and about one hour late at night--I sure do not want to spend that time doing housework that I avoided during the day because the kids were in my hair! I want my chores done while the kids are awake so I can use my kid-free time to relax, read, watch television, or work on my new cross-stitching project!)

So, this morning we baked our family bread. John is learning to measure the dry ingredients himself and he's been pouring ingredients and mixing for a year now. Today he had the first-time-ever idea to put raisins in the bread, so I told him that, indeed, such a thing exists: cinnamon-sugar-raisin bread! Mary was showing good technique kneading the dough, which inspired me to grab the video camera--although then, of course, she didn't do it so well. You'll note that our perfectionist son corrects me that Mary is not "kneading" but is "rolling" the dough.

Between the two rises, we rolled out the dough and added the cinnamon-sugar and raisins.

The satisfying results, including each of the children's small loaves they made all by themselves!

A special note: As a mom with only one young baby, I didn't have a clue how more experienced mothers got anything done when I couldn't even take a shower. As a mom now with one preschooler and one toddler, I am just starting to figure out how more experienced moms with many children (four, five, eight, even fourteen!) get things done. So, for any mom-friends who are less experienced than me who are reading this and wondering how on earth I baked my own bread, please know that it can be a pretty chaotic experience! It goes much, much slower than if I were doing it without any children around. It is interrupted many times by things like Mary (in potty training) peeing on the floor, or one sibling throwing something (flour, raisins, a toy) at the other such that I need to discipline one and comfort the other, somebody accidentally knocking over a glass of water. Plus the kids get covered in flour and need to be all cleaned up. And the kitchen floor--oh my, you don't even want to see the mess on the floor when all is said and done! I think that doing work with children nearby or even participating involves a great shift of perspective and expectation.