Cooking with HIPPY

This summer, I enrolled Helen in her first non church-related organized event, and this fall she began the HIPPY program in Atmore. And if you wonder what in blue blazes HIPPY is, skip to my link.

Helen was standoffish at first, and dreaded the initial testing. Gradually she warmed up to our home educator, Mrs. Teresa, and now she looks forward to doing a little fun activity with me each day, even though we don't get to it every day.

Most of the lessons are literature-based, and follow the theme of a children's book that we get a copy of, but last week we had a cooking lesson. We took two completely different substances and combined them to make something different. In our kitchen, it was pudding mix and milk. Complicated, I know, but Helen loved it. She even chose the pudding flavor in the grocery store. I opened the box of lemon pudding, poured the milk, and she whisked for a long time while I yakked on the phone. I totally missed the part where we were supposed to taste and feel the separate ingredients. Oops. Then we divided the pudding into espresso cups, and Helen put three snowman marshmallows on each cup. She counted the cups, counted the snowmen in each cup, and counted the total amount of snowmen. It was fascinating for her, and fun for me to see her learn.