Tag Archives: baking

Baking Autumnal Cookies!

October 18, 2024 Mr Edwards Leave a comment

As the days grow shorter, there’s no better time to get creative in the kitchen with your little ones. Pumpkin cookies are not only a delicious treat but also a fantastic way to engage our children in hands-on learning. Baking helps develop fine motor skills, introduces basic math concepts, and encourages sensory exploration.

Using a freshly scooped pumpkin, the children removed the seeds and helped prepare it for roasting in the oven. Once it was perfectly cooked, Derek created a deliciously smooth pumpkin puree, ready to be used in our baking.

The first step of the recipe was measuring out all the ingredients. For early years children, this is a great opportunity to develop important math skills. Weighing and measuring help them understand quantities, recognize numbers, and begin to grasp basic concepts of volume and weight. Plus, they love the hands-on experience of using measuring spoons and scales! “We need 100” “2 big spoons”

With everything prepped, it was time to mix all the ingredients together, watching as the flour, spices, and pumpkin puree blended into a soft dough. The children took turns mixing and exploring the different textures. We even explored solids becoming liquids by melting the butter. “It’s like soup” “It’s hot”

Next, we shaped the dough into small balls, rolling them carefully with our hands, and placed them onto the baking tray, ready to bake in the oven. The excitement grew as the cookies began to take shape and the delicious smell of pumpkin filled the room!

All ready, look at our fantastic cookies snack 😃

Check out our easy recipe below and enjoy a sweet, memorable autumn activity with your little ones!

110g room temperature butter

(dairy free or regular)

165 g light brown sugar

100 g white sugar

120g pure pumpkin puree

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

270g gluten free all purpose baking flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

2.5 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

0.25 teaspoon cinnamon

0.25 teaspoon salt

60 g chocolate chips

Article 1
Everyone under 18 has all these rights.

Article 28
You have the right to education.

Baking, Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Literacy, music, nature, Outdoor Learning, Snack, Social Studies

What have we been doing at Cart Mill this week?

July 5, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

This week at Cart Mill we have been taking part in a wide variety of learning experiences across each of our playrooms and our garden.
In our Discovery room we have continued along our Jack and the Beanstalk learning journey by investigating “forces” and “travel”. Our mission was to find a way for Jack to get to and from the castle without the giant seeing! To do this we decided to fill the balloon with air and let it go to see how far it would travel towards the castle. It’s been so much fun seeing how much air we need to make the balloon go fast or slow.

In our Studio we have shown an interest in diggers and have been using the water tray as our construction site. We used dried rice to represent the dirt and had great fun using the construction toys to fill, empty and transport the rice. We used our technology skills to look at videos of real construction vehicles on our smart board. This experience had such a great level of engagement from all our children, especially our younger ones. We even found a Danny go video called “digging in the dirt” to all join in with, incorporating our health, well-being and movements skills.

In our Home room we have continued to develop our baking skills by researching recipes, measuring ingredients and making yummy vegan treats for our afternoon snack! The best part was taste testing our baking!
In our playdough area we have been experimenting by adding different scents to our playdough. We’ve tried peppermint, lemon and orange extracts. We even tried chocolate powder to make chocolate playdough. It smelt so good and looked just like chocolate. This week we decided to wander out to the the planting area to choose herbs and flowers to introduce some different scents. We picked basil, thyme, garlic and some flowers. As we grow in confidence, we are able to make our playdough independently using our self serve playdough station. It has been lots of fun choosing loose parts to add to our playdough and creating wonderful models.
Between the smells of playdough and daily home baking our home room smells delightful.

And finally our garden! The weather has been a little varied this week with showers of rain in between the sunshine. As usual, we didn’t let that stop our fun! We have used the gross motor rollers to mark make, played role play games using the play house and even took part in music and movement games such as head shoulders knees and toes. We extended our muddy movers skills by playing catch with the sticky ball and catching mitts. It was lots of fun taking turns with catching and throwing.

We all love learning through our play at Cart Mill! I wonder what we will do next week during our summer adventures?

UNCRC article 28- we have the right to play.

Snack

Homemade Cart Mill Crumble!

May 10, 2024 Mr Edwards Leave a comment

In the bustling kitchen of Cart Mill, our young chefs have been busy making their very own apple crumble from scratch. Working together they have transformed simple ingredients into a mouth watering dessert. Let’s dive into what they did today.

Ingredients:

Fresh, crisp apples
Gluten-free flour
Butter (Homemade of course)

Cooking Steps:

Peeling and Chopping Apples: With careful guidance and a trusty peeler, the children skilfully removed the apple skins supported by an adult to ensure every apple was perfectly peeled. Once peeled the apples were diced into tiny pieces ready to be cooked till nice and soft.

Making Homemade Butter: The kitchen was full of excitement as the children embarked on a butter-making adventure. Filling a container with double cream, and a few marbles they were ready to begin. Woking together they shook the contents for a very very long time, but their persistence paid off. When we opened the container what did we find….BUTTER!

“It takes a very very long time”

“look its butter”

“Butter comes from cows”

“You make butter with milk”

Creating the Crumbly Crumble: With homemade butter in hand and flour at the ready, the children blended the two ingredients together. Displaying excellent fine motor skills they rubbed until a crumbly concoction emerged. It will be a perfect topping!

Layering and Topping: As the final step, the children layered the cooked apples into a dish. Adding generous sprinkles of the crumble mixture on top they were complete and smelling delicious!

Now, with their apple crumbles assembled they are ready to take home for baking until golden and bubbling. We wrote our names on the lid so we could identify them at home time. Well done team!

At Cart Mill, cooking is all about fun and teamwork! Making apple crumble together not only filled their tummies but also explored new skills. Cheers to their cooking adventure!

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Article 1
Everyone under 18 has all these rights

Article 28
You have the right to education

Article 29
You have the right to education which tries to
develop your personality and abilities as much as
possible and encourages you to respect other
people’s rights and values and to respect the
environment

Snack

Promoting muffin and snack making, self serving and tidying up after ourselves 👍

February 28, 2024 Mrs Johnston Leave a comment

At Cart Mill we are promoting independence, responsibility through learning to be resilient and confident and to be able to do things for ourselves.

Today we made muffins to serve at snack for our friends, this is a very popular experience which we do daily to give everyone a turn. By making the same recipe everyday allows the children to become confident in making the muffins independently with only a little support needed for the oven.

The children are familiar with the receipe…3 scoops of gluten free flour, 1 scoop of sugar, xanthum gum, baking powder and some coconut milk to bind together.

We put the muffins in the cases ready for the oven, 180 degrees for 20mins.

Whilst waiting for the muffins we start preparing our snack. The children choose their snack in the morning and being very careful with the knife we start chopping…

Watermelon, green apples, pineapple to go along with our freshly made muffins….delicious!!!

The choice and amount are displayed on our wall so the 2-5 year olds can identify the snack and clearly see how many they can have in accordance with our guidance and learning that we are sharing with our friends.

We sit together at snack enjoying the social element of talking to our friends and scaffolding our learning by watching the example set by our peers.

Why not try to make these muffins easy muffins at home (I’m sure the children will help you 😀)

Article 31 Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities

Baking, Snack

Spiced apple cake for snack🍎

November 7, 2023 Mrs MacRae Leave a comment

The children at Cart Mill love to bake. For our afternoon snack we have been introducing some homemade baking.

Today we have been busy making some spiced apple cake. Baking helps to develop the children independence skills. The children are able to following instructions, carrying out small tasks independently.

First we chopped our apple into small pieces. Our children know how to keep ourself safe while using the knifes.

“We need to sit on the chair”

“We are need to be careful, we don’t want to chop our fingers”

Chopping the apple not only promotes independence but help develop fine motor skills and co ordination.

Next we use the measuring spoons to measure out the ingredients helping develop our numeracy skills.

1..2 scoops of flour

1 scoop of sugar…

Once we added all our ingredients and gave it a big stir. It was hard work, we had to use lots of muscles.

“It’s all sticky”

”It’s going to taste yummy”

Here are all our children enjoy sharing the snack with their friends.

Article 27 – You have the right to food, clothing a safe place to live and to have your basic needs met.

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Banana and raisin muffins

June 30, 2023 Miss Brown Leave a comment

This week our little chefs have been baking delicious muffins, following recipes from our ‘Tickle fingers, toddler cookbook’. We have been making Dairy and Gluten free Blueberry Yoghurt muffins but we ran out of blueberry yoghurt (Plant based Alpro- soya) and blueberries so had to improvise this morning.

We followed the same recipe but adapted the ingredients to suit what we had available. We had a discussion on what ingredients we would use. “We could use bananas” “and raisins”.

We washed our hands and put our aprons on ready to begin baking.

Working their larger arm muscles, the children began by using a potato masher to mash the banana until it was all mushy. They helped each other as it was so tough.

“It’s so tricky” “ I’m using my big muscles”

Next we added all the liquids to the banana mix including oil, honey, soya milk and gave it a good mix using the whisk.

They added the raisins then used their measuring skills to weigh out the gluten free self raising flour using the scales, each child took turns to add a scoop to the bowl and watched as the measurements got higher.

”it’s got a 3 and 4”

“Now it’s got two 6’s that number is sixty six”

Next they added the flour to the mix and gave it a good mix till it was the right consistency for our muffins. We filled up our muffin cases and popped them in the oven at 180 degrees for 20 minutes. We discussed how to use the oven safely using oven gloves and letting an adult put them in.

The muffins turned out great and are now ready to go home.

”they smell like banana”

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Let’s get baking 🥧

May 12, 2023 User deactivated Leave a comment

What an experience we had today making our very own vegan rhubarb scones from scratch with the rhubarb we’ve grown at nursery.

We went to our garden to see the rhubarb we previously planted that we have been taking care of by watering it regularly. It was now time to be picked and used.
“This one is very big.”

”I’m so strong, I can pull the rhubarb out.”

After picking the rhubarb we washed it and cut it into small pieces, adding some water and 2 teaspoons of sugar, the next step was to put it into the microwave which we discussed the safety rules for.

“I help my mum at home to cut up.”

“I’ll put one more little bit in.”

The children can independently select the ingredients needed as they follow our visual recipe. Firstly we measured out the amounts required using mathematical language of more and less. Once we made our ingredients into a dough we rolled it out developing our fine motor skills and lastly we put the scones in the oven taking great care with the times as we don’t want the firemen to visit 🫢.

“I’ll put all the butter in.”

”Its at number 10, we need more.”

“It smells like sweeties.”
“I’m going to roll it into a ball.”

The children take great pride in using the produce they have grown and are so proud to take these home and share with their families, why don’t you try this at home, discover the joy of watching your vegetables grow and create something you can all enjoy!!!😃

Here are the children’s delicious rhubarb vegan scones. Yum!!

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Scone tastic🥯

January 18, 2023 Mrs MacRae Leave a comment

The children are learning to make Scones independently.

First the children wash their hands and help to collect the ingredients and resources we need to make the scones. Today the children have chosen to make plain scones.

The children have been having a guess at how much ingredients we need.

”we need 1 scoop of flour”

We looked at our recipe “oh our recipe says we need 2 cups so we need more”

“I can measure the milk” ok can you pour the milk to the number 6?

The children have had so much fun making the scones and can’t wait to take them home to try them. 😋