Time to Roll and other Culinary Delights - French toast roll ups

All 7 of the children in our youngest sibling group have extreme delays which means lots and lots of therapy and work on their part, to help them manage different aspects of their lives.  Over the years they have had weekly therapy sessions and their homeschool day includes practicing their current goals but the number one thing I have found that helps is finding a way to include their interests into the therapy goals.  With the 7, we have been working on functional skills to help with dressing themselves and various daily life skills.  I frequently look for ideas that will incorporate many skills, that the kids hopefully will enjoy and not realize they are working on skills.....I really don't want them thinking their lives have been one big therapy session.

Cooking is a favoured activity for the children so quite often we use this as a means to work on their therapy goals and school at the same time.  Today we worked on fine motor skills, sequencing, following directions, reading math, feeding therapy, etc.

We made French Toast Roll Ups and the possibilities are endless with these.  We made them with a therapeutic goal but they are good and can be made by anyone, even my 4 year old "made" his own lunch.

1. Decide how many roll ups you would like and then cut the crust off of the desired number of slices of bread. 

 2.  With a rolling pin, flatten the bread.

3. Spread your desired topping on the flattened bread.  We used cheese slices on some and cinnamon/sugar spread on others.  Nutella or peanut butter and jam would also be good. 

4.Roll flattened bread with desired topping, jelly roll style.

5.  Dip rolls into a mixture of egg and milk.

6.  In frying pan cook the rolls until toasted on all sides.  

7.  Serve with sryup or sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.  

The kids and I had so much fun making these and they have been telling everyone they can that they made themselves cinnamon buns for lunch.

Making some dough....$$$$

Each week one of our young adults has been taking orders and then producing bread for sale. Earning her own spending money is the driving force behind this business venture.  With the help of a support person, usually Mom, she has been able to produce up to 8 loaves of bread in a day.  This weeks bread is a favourite with the customers and is delicious paired with homemade soup.

Rosemary Bread

Ingredients
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 cups warm water
4 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons butter, softened
4 tablesppons rosemary
3 teaspoons Italian seasoning
5-6 cups all purpose flout
Olive oil to grease bowl and loaf pan.

Dissolve the sugar in warm water and mix in yeast.  When yeast is bubbly mix in butter, rosemary, italian seasoning, salt, and add flour gradually to form a workable dough.

Coat the inside of a large bowl with olive oil.  Place dough in bowl, cover and allow to rise 1 hour or until double in size in a warm location.  We put in oven with the oven light on.

Punch down dough and divide in half.  Place in a greased loaf pan and allow to rise until doubled in size (1 hour).  Cook at 375 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown.

The bread making has been teaching many skills and some have been easier to learn than others.  She has learned the importance of accurate measuring when one loaf came out like a rock.  A lot of math skills are being taught between measurements, costing out ingredients and determining the cost per loaf, and money math when selling the loaves.  Social skills are being taught dealing with customers between taking orders, filling orders and talking up her business.  There is also the much needed hand and arm strengthening (OT benefits) that has been happening from mixing and kneading the bread by hand.  Our baker has a terrible work ethic that we have been trying to rectify and probably the most shocking lesson of all was when she woke up "oh so sick" and decided she couldn't possibly make bread and the customers did not pay....she honestly felt the customers would giver her money even if they didn't get their bread.

Reducing frustration, 1 ball at a time

When we adopted our son 2 1/2 years ago, at 2 years of age, he struggled with almost everthing and many of our friends and family thought of him as difficlut to love.  With severe sensory issues, autism, epilepsy and a chromosome deletion everything in his life triggered screaming, raging and head banging.  Our sons abilities were extremely delayed, he wasn't walking or standing, could only sit when propped up, he could not speak and his feeding was similar to a 6 month old.  Existing took major amounts of energy and he slept the majority of the days and nights only waking for nourishment and a limited amount of interaction before the screaming, raging and head banging returned and the need for more sleep.

This little boy only had one thing that made him the slightest bit happy, so we knew that we had to work with this interest if we ever hoped to have a happy boy.  The slightest bit happy meant he wasn't screaming, raging or banging his head for a couple minutes while we tried to interact with him.  We needed to meet our son where he was at, and progress from there.  He was able to hold a ball and enjoyed watching us play with a ball.  We would have mutliple very short sessions throughout the day playing with a ball building slowly and steadily on skills and language.

Speech increased as we described everything, starting with single words, and increasing the number of words.  Ball, roll, throw, roll the ball, etc.  We used "picture cards" and "sign language" while verbally speaking hoping to make a connection.

Strength and coordination increased as he went from holding a ball, to moving to reach for the ball, to rolling, throwing, catching and kicking the ball.

We varied the balls, shapes, sizes, weights, textures and colors which built on the strength, coordination and topics for speech.  We encouraged him to play with siblings and pets,  with the balls.  When we attended therapies we had already started developing a pathway for the therapists to reach our son which they were able to work from.

From starting with a simple ball 2 1/2 years ago he is now able to play with many other toys and work through his therapy sessions working on a variety of skills.  He is still substantially delayed but he is making huge progress from the little boy that spent the day screaming, raging and head banging.
We will still resort back to that ball whenever we are working on a particularly difficult skill.  Most recenty we took 2 soccer balls to the playground hoping to work on social skills with peers.  Today there were 3 other young children and when they saw us coming with 2 balls they came over (with their adults) wanting to play.  All the adults encouraged the children to take turns and they all enjoyed playing together.  Having 2 balls made it easier so each child had more turns so nobody lost interest too quickly and if our son decided not to have anything to do with sharing at least the other children could use the 2nd ball.

All the hard work from therapists and family, that started with a simple ball, is paying off.  People regularly comment on what a happy little boy he is and the head banging, raging and screaming has dramatically decreased.   Finding that interest to build on took time but was well worth the effort and throughout his life I believe we will be looking for more interests to build on as we develop more skills.