Understanding the World - learning through food
The children in nursery spend lots of time pretending to make cakes, biscuits and other treats to share with their friends and the adults in nursery, for example with the play dough and in the home corner.
To encourage children to try new foods and get stuck in with tasting and baking with unfamiliar ingredients, we try and incorporate food-based activities into our curriculum linked to children’s interests and our wider learning. For example, during World Nursery Rhyme Week, the children were invited to spread honey on bread to share at snack time, just like the queen did in the song. We also made chocolate corn flake bird’s nests with blueberry eggs when we sang ‘Two little dickie birds’. Apple crumble and pumpkin soup were on our food menu during our ‘Autumn extravaganza’ week and helped the children to learn about seasonal produce as well as creating something tasty to share at the end of the session.
As well being able to share what we make with others, baking and cooking activities provide a wealth of maths and scientific learning opportunities, around measuring and weighing ingredients, as well as observing how ingredients change as they are mixed together and then cooked.
