Nothing is yummier than pancakes with this year’s maple syrup and last year’s pumpkin or squash puree. We baked halves of pumpkin on a cookie sheet in a 350 oven after removing the seeds. (Adding a little water helps to steam the pumpkins quickly.) Remove when they’re fork tender and allow to cool. Then you can scoop out the pumpkin, mash it and store it away in the freezer until the day before you need it. For these children, that freezer bag of pumpkin contains all the memories of last summer’s garden. It also adds vitamin A and fiber to their diets!

This is an easy recipe to put together and it has lots of opportunities to access math skills for all ages. We doubled the recipe so we doubled fractional amounts, like 1/4 plus 1/4. We set the pancakes in an array as they cooked, calling attention to the multiplication fact you can see in the photo above: 3 rows of 5 or 5 rows of 3 = 15 pancakes…..hardly enough  for this hungry group of After School kids, so we made another 15. How many was that? How many did each of us get to eat?

Each child took turns adding ingredients. Everyone had a chance to smell or taste the ingredients as they practiced new words, like “nutmeg” or “vanilla”.

Everyone took a recipe home to try recreating pancakes with their families. You can click on the recipe below!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click on recipe:  Pumpkin Pancakes