YA Program: Think Your Drink

Today's YA SRP activity was "Think Your Drink," an eye-opening presentation that illustrated how much sugar is in our everyday drinks.

A variety of common drinks were presented. Each participant chose a beverage and calculated the number of teaspoons of sugar in their can or bottle. They then scooped that number of teaspoons into a clear cup.

We made our own sports drink by dissolving sugar and salt in warm water, adding juice (we chose apple), and cold water. After refrigeration, the general concensus was that it wasn't like the #1 sports drink, and was too sweet. This portion of the program could be bigger by using different types of juice and comparing the concoctions.

To wrap up the program we took a simple recipe and made an easy smoothie with yogurt and orange juice.

Our sandwich shop donated sandwiches and cookies for the event.

YA Program: Sugar Cookie Decorating

Sugar Cookie Decorating

Supplies:
Five dozen sugar cookies
Paper plates
Cling wrap (for “to go” plates)
Bowls/cups if mixing frosting
Spoons and knives for stirring and spreading
Ziploc bags for piping icing
Food coloring (optional)
Sprinkles
Frosting in tubs OR:
Powdered sugar (2 1lb bags at least)
Milk (1/2 gal would probably be more than enough)

How long it took – 45 minutes for decorating, eating, hanging out, cleaning up.
Who participated – After school set – mostly middle school students (approx 20 participants)

Each participant took two cookies on paper plate. We used simple powdered sugar and milk icing. They passed icing around their tables and shared sprinkles. Once everyone had decorated, they could get seconds on cookies.

How I’ll do this better next time:

• I will buy or beg for cookies from the bakery rather than making them myself. This was a last minute decision to do a program before winter break and it didn’t occur to me I could just buy some.
• Prepare frosting before the kids arrive – I thought they’d like making the frosting themselves. They were in a hurry to decorate because they couldn’t eat until they decorated. Most of them just poured icing, dumped sprinkles and squirted food coloring. Wild, but a lot of fun, too.
• Mix a big batch of icing and divide it to add food coloring and put into Ziploc bags for piping or bowls/cups for spreading. This will make your prep time longer, but Ziplocs will also slow down the activity and fill more time. (My aim was to keep them engaged after school, so the longer the better.)
• Take pictures of finished cookies and blue faces (we had some creative use of food coloring.)

This could be done for other seasons. I’ll do this again at Valentines Day and book talk YA books with lovey-dovey words in the titles. It would make a good Halloween program, too.

See flier below.