It may be the last week of term but there is no slowing down for us!
We have been very busy making changes to our role play area. Following conversations with the children about making cakes using playdough and which cakes were their favourites, we got busy on Monday working with the children to create a café/bakers area in our role play corner of the nursery.
This led to discussions about visiting a real bakers, with children suggesting, “why don’t we go to see the bakers in Tesco, then we could go to Clarks Bakery on a trip?” Well, that’s just what we did!
Danny talked about the procedure for roll making, and we were shown the texture of the dough inside of a roll, and even got a sneaky wee taste! We were also shown a tray of empty pie cases, and Danny told us how they make their pie shells to be vegan, vegetarian and suitable for most allergies – with the only 2 ingredients being water and flour. We were given a taste of the pie shells also, and asked to compare the texture of both the roll and the pie shell.
We then came back through to the preparation table, where they had readymade dough laying out for the children to roll out and explore. Danny talked to us about the main ingredient in bread being yeast, and we got to smell it and the children all agreed it smelled like cheesy feet! He gave us a mini experiment to carry out after we had a chance of rolling out fresh dough, and it was to mould a piece of yeast into a ball and add a little drop of salt to it, Danny explained to us that this was going to be a chemical reaction and that we would need to watch closely for it happening on our plates.
Mr Alan Clark came to meet the children and tell them all about his experiences in the bakery industry, and that he had been a baker since he was 10 years old! He told us and showed us how to knead dough properly, and the children enjoyed copying his actions with their dough. A few children even told Mr Clark that they wanted to be real bakers when they grow up! He was delighted at this response and told them it was a very enjoyable job. He brought through some freshly baked loafs of white and brown bread, and the children got to taste bits of these and compare the taste of what they preferred.
After the bread tasting, we shifted our attention back to our paper plates of yeast and salt, and watched for the salt dissolving into the yeast to create a melting liquid that they use in bread.
We then started to round up our trip when Danny suggested, because the children had been so good, that the bakery would provide us with a treat bag each, and some cake boxes/bags/props to take back to our nursery to recreate in role play what we were so lucky to experience today!
We then all left the bakery feeling hungry with the scents we smelled, and eager to return back to nursery to share with everybody what we were able to see and learn on our trip!
Sounds like the children had an amazing experience and learned so much! Sophie really enjoyed the trip. She said her favourite thing was “tasting the bread and rolling the dough” oh and (“getting on the bus”) Thanks to everyone involved!