Bread and Soup

I don't always post pictures about our weekly baking and cooking. Mostly because if often escapes my memory to get a few shots in while up to my elbows with flour or in room room full of 3 year olds with butter knives. However, most weeks we do bake bread. During the summer we took a little break from our baking as it was hot and spending time outside before the heat settled in was of the most importance. As the school year came around again, so did our weekly bread making. To add to our learning we have decided to take the first 26 weeks of school and use our bread dough to shape each letter of the alphabet. It is such an exciting way to incorporate our learning of letters/sounds with the senses. Students can really say, "I made the letter today".

Letter F rolls are ready for the oven.

Capital D and one lower case d fresh out of the oven.

In mid-October we added 'Warm Soup Wednesday' to our routine. The students help to prepare and cook our soup for the day. At lunch time everyone gets to try the soup that they helped to make that morning as part of their lunch. Even some our the most reluctant eaters are eager to sample their creations each week and find new vegetables that they really do enjoy.

We spend the first 30 minutes of our school day on Wednesday cutting our vegetables for soup.

Each students gets to use a cutting board and butter knife. We found that the butter knives work much better than some of the plastic child safe knives we have tried. At first cutting was hard for little hands but after weeks of practice all the students are getting very skilled at holding the item with one hand and cutting with the other hand. Even our youngest 2 year old works hard each week to cut up her veggies!

We've done variations of vegetable soup, minestrone, noodle and vegetable soup, and even the one below which was creamy potato and carrot soup.

The children take such pride in creating food that they later eat. I can't think of a better way to share the love of cooking and eating with young children.