Cookie decorating session

I was excited when I heard there were going to be Little Chef Workshop at Alamanda last week. We spent the week making aprons (will blog about this later) and then went early last Saturday to take the kids.

I put Adam's apron on first, then the instructor came over to put Mia's apron on...I could sense disaster coming. The girl doesn't respond well to kindness from strangers! She started wailing out loud and refused to join in the session.

Adam plotting on how to decorate his cookies

I thought it was going to be a baking class but actually the cookies were ready made, they were just going to decorate it. But still it was interesting..

Mia all moody and said 'Adik scared Uncle...'

putting the final touches on his star cookie

That look on his face was priceless!

*Price per session = rm10

It was a fun session. The kids had fun...but I observed something during the session. While teaching the children how to decorate, the instructors showed them a 'finished' product and specifically instructed them to copy the cookie exactly. Any initiative to be creative is promptly turned down. They had to follow the exact colour, the same technique. When Adam was going to decorate his second cookie, which was a dinosaur shaped one, there was no 'finished' dinosaur cookie to copy. I was relieved and thought, oh finally we can see some freedom and creativity here. Adam chose yellow and blue to decorate his dinosaur and the instructor said 'Yellow??? Choose green la....come on...green is better...there's no yellow dinosaur....'

This again made me think about schooling and our school system. Most schools operate on this strict basis of conformity. They expect all the children to fit into the same mold. They decide of what the children must learn, and how, and leave very little room for individuality.

So what if the dinosaur is yellow?