Cookies!

At the beginning of each school year, Mark does a "cookie lab" with his students. They watch an episode of Good Eats that demonstrates three different methods for baking chocolate chip cookies: thin & crispy, chewy, and cakey. He then splits them up into different groups and sends them home over a weekend to make the cookies. They bring them to school and taste test them, choose a winner, and then they get to write their first lab report of the year about making cookies. What does this have to do with science, you ask? Well, there are different ingredients in each of the three recipes that change the chemical properties of the cookies. For those students (like me, for example) who aren't science savvy, it's a helpful way to learn how to write a lab report that will meet Mark's standards...which are high. Actually, this lab was my idea several years ago and has been a popular item with the students ever since. And the other teachers don't mind, either, since they end up getting to eat a bunch of cookies.

Here's a sample of the selection Mark brought home for Liam and I today (in case you're wondering, the ones on the right were my fave):


Unfortunately, cookie day fell on the same day that I went to visit my midwife and got weighed. I was doing so well...had kept the weight gain under twenty pounds...and then BOOM! I gained 4 pounds in two weeks. And then came home to a boat load of cookies. Guess what? I ate them anyway. Not all of them, of course. Liam had some, too:

And much to his disappointment, we stopped eating them so we'd have some in the next few days. Here he is with a "where's my cookies" look on his face...

Hopefully he'll forget we have them and not ask for cookies for breakfast!