I’ve been working on the activity section for the Monkey King box and spent most of yesterday sculpting figurines out of glutinous rice flour. Luckily, my daughter was home from school and offered to help. I followed the dough figurine recipe from the Chinese Language School, though when I write up the actual activity for the Teacher’s Guide, I’ll need to adapt to make it a wee bit more kid and teacher friendly. I recommend teachers make and colour the dough in advance and then allow it to warm to to room temperature before giving it to the kids to sculpt. My daughter had a tough time working the colouring into the dough until it warmed up and became pliable. Once we got to the actual sculpting stage, she had a blast. Here are a few pics from yesterday:

The ingredients

Glutinous rice flour

Mixing water, flours, salt and alum

Kneading the dough

Rice dough balls

Boiling the dough balls

Monkey King’s Fruit and Flower Mountain

Monkey King (a little on the chubby side)

You’ll notice that I didn’t include any photos of the colouring and sculpting process…that’s because my hands were so covered in icing colour and dough, I couldn’t pick up my phone without covering it in orange goo. Next time I’ll wear gloves!