Making Rice Krispies Treats

    

   We were doing word sort activities the other day and one of the subjects we were writing words about was breakfast foods. One of the kids says Rice Krispies. This led us into a brief discussion of crisp, Krisp, and eventually the plural of "ies".  Nothing is simple in the English language.  Why c and K? Do we need both of the letters?  How do we know when it's a "k" and not a "c"? Why do some words have "ies" for a plural and others just an "s"?  A lot of things in the English language just don't make sense!  My students have often heard me rant along the lines of, "Hey, you were born in America, that's just the way it is, get used to it!  

   Anyway...the subject of Rice Krispie Treats came up and no one had ever made them.  I said it's  real easy to make them and had one of the students look it up on the internet and show it on the smartboard to prove my point.  Of course they were interested, how could they not be?  I cut a deal with them to make them within a week or so, depending upon how well regular classwork get completed this next week or so.  The lure of refined sugar is a strong attraction for just about anybody, let alone your average 2nd grader.  What follows is some of the writing and making activities.

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Say what you will, but licking the spoon is

still a pretty great thing.

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   The students usually have some sort writing and reading assignment before and after the actual activity.  Before the activity, in this case, the students read the directions and did a self generated word sort activity that covered the various vocabulary words necessary for making the Rice Krispies Treats.  After the activity they had to write the directions, which they type themselves after writing a sloppy copy. I'm posting one at the start of this page and one at the end.

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How to Make Rice Krispys Treats

1. We got mashmallows.

2. Rice Krispies (3 cups)

3. We got butter



    We put butter and mashallows in a bowl.  We put it in the microwave and we cooked it for 20 or 30 seconds.  We took it out and stirred it up. We added Marshmallows and we put it in a big bowl. We stirred the marshmallows with the Rice Krispies.  We put wax paper on the pan then we put the  Rice Krispies on the pan.  Then we cut it and ate it.                   

By  Johnnie C .

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 How it starts, they have to tell me the plan.

From their notes.

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Here Tony M. pours some marshmallows into a bowl.

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As per instructions, a little butter is cut up 

to be melted with the marshmallows.

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Tony M. puts the bowl full of marshmallows 

and the little bit of butter into the microwave

for about 20 or thirty seconds.

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The bowl of marshmallows and butter is taken

out and stirred.  You do this about 3 or 4 times.

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While things are being melted and stirred, Antonio starts

pouring the Rice Krispies  into the bowls.

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Here the melted marshmallows are being poured

into the large bowl of Rice Krispies.

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Stirring and more stirring with Ms. Collins looking on

in the 2nd pic.

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After the melted marshmallows have been stirred

with the Krispies, all you have to do is spoon out

the mixture and pat it down with wax paper

onto a cookie sheet covered with wax paper.

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Making Marshmallow Treats By Tony M.

  Ingredients

 1.  Cup of  marshmallow

 2.  3 cups of  Rice Krispies
 
 3.  1 and  1/2  table spoons butter


      Put   butter and marshmallows in the bowl. Put it in the microwave.  Cook for 30 seconds.   Take it out and stir it up.  We added more marshmallows and cooked and stirred again. Then we
put the Rice Krispies in  the big  bowl. We poured in the melted marshmallows in to the bowl of Rice Krispies and we stirred every thing up. Then we put the stuff on to wax paper. We let it cool, we cut it up, and we ate it.

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   That's pretty much it.  Making Rice Krispy Treats is fun, easy,  and inexpensive. Educationally, it's one more activity  that  can involve reading, writing, sequencing and vocabulary.  
   Plus, I'm pretty sure most of the kids on this planet will like making them and eating them!