There are too many variables in bread baking for me to follow a strict recipe. It's good to have some kind of a guide, especially when making a new recipe for the first time. But the differences in humidity, types of flour, etc. make this more of an art than a science. My constant is always the amount of water that I start out with. This will get me in the ball park of the amount of dough I wish to end up with. I know approximately how much flour I will be adding during the mixing process, but I never feel obligated to use a certain amount because the recipe "says it is so!". I add flour, GRADUALLY, until I reach the desired consistency. If you've made the recipe before, you know what that desired consistency is. Trust yourself and use the recipe as a guide rather than a strict blueprint.

Of course, the bigger issue is that children learn gratitude. Manners are important and have their place in society, but it's a comparatively easy thing to teach a child to say thank you when they receive a gift. Of course, if you genuinely FEEL grateful when receiving a gift, the thank you comes without prompting. When a child doesn't say thank you, it is likely because they really aren't feeling it. That's a much thornier issue to address.

As a piano teacher myself, I would have to agree that embarking on teaching the Suzuki method of instruction without training could be very frustrating for both the parent and the child. The Suzuki books themselves have very little instructional guidance. Most of what you need to know about HOW to use the books comes from training seminars or from mentoring with other experienced teachers. I think a much better route for parent guided instruction would be something like the Music for Little Mozarts. Or better still, a new method book which I have been using with my four year old students called "My First Piano Adventure", published by Faber and Faber. It too comes with a CD, and I think the course of instruction would be much easier to follow for home study.