A Simple Strategy + Some Bomb Brownies
One thing that’s super delightful about having a three year old is that she keeps surprising me with ways in which she’s really helpful (and skilled!). A few days ago, she asked to help me peel a carrot, and I was rather shocked when she peeled it perfectly.
I have to confess that I’m a reluctant cook/baker (I make dinner almost every night, but it’s definitely because I love to eat, and not because I love to cook). So to be honest, she hasn’t spent TONS of time helping me out in the kitchen because I normally make my kids go outside and/or play together while I make dinner.
The pre-dinner hour is not our finest moment (they call it “the witching hour” for a reason). Both kids, especially my youngest, need a lot of attention and basically just want me to play with them. Although I’d certainly rather be playing than cooking, when I’m trying to get dinner on the table I just don’t have that luxury!
However, now that they’re getting a little older, I realized that including both of my girls more in the kitchen has some highly strategic benefits. First of all, obviously, they’ll learn how to cook, which seems like a pretty basic life skill.
But ALSO! When I talk about what we’re doing and describe everything that’s happening in the kitchen, I can totally increase their exposure to new words (¡en español!).
Did you know that simply describing what you’re doing as you go about your day will expose your kids to 1,000-2,000 words EVERY hour?
That’s why DESCRIBE is one of the 5 simple strategies in Read on Arizona’s Smart Talk campaign. I really love this strategy, because having a strong vocabulary makes it so much easier for kids to follow instructions, express their feelings when they’re frustrated, and develop the ability to read.
If you haven’t checked out the Smart Talk campaign yet, I highly recommend doing so! There, you’ll find tips and resources to help us parents/caregivers become our kids’ first and best teachers. Best of all, every strategy is simple and totally doable, anywhere, any time.
As bilingual parents, we know that the only way for our kids to be bilingual is to give them enough exposure to Spanish. So for me, it’s a relief that making this happen can be something as easy as describing everything that we’re doing and trying to encourage a back-and-forth dialogue about our everyday tasks.
And while this is not (and probably never will be) a cooking blog, I couldn’t share these pictures with you and NOT give you my Tía Susan’s bomb brownie recipe! So here it is in case you, too, are inspired to invite your niños into the kitchen to try Smart Talk’s DESCRIBE strategy out.
Tía Susan’s Brownies
Ingredients
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 bar butter
- 3 TBS cocoa
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9 x 9 baking pan with cooking spray.
- Beat sugar and butter until smooth.
- Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until combined.
- Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with wet crumbs (it’s always 30 minutes for me).
- Cool brownies in pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes.
- Serve warm or at room temperature (no judgement if you eat them all in one sitting!).
This post is sponsored by Read On Arizona, an organization that shares my enthusiasm for helping parents raise readers.
by Alice Schertle 
text by various authors, art by Robert Sabuda
by Chih-Yuan Chen
by 
by Joanne Oppenheim
by Francisco Jiménez
by Chris Van Allsburg
by Roseanne Greenfield Thong (English with sprinkles of Spanish)
.” Eyebrows on point, right?
,” which was one of the very first books in Spanish we were given when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter. Two and a half years (and hundreds of picture books) later, it’s still one of my favorite Spanish children’s books of all time!