There are few things that interest children more than themselves and the people close to them - followed closely by things they like to eat and drink! So, it is unsurprising that their role play often includes preparing, buying and eating foods of all sorts, whether it is fruit and vegetables, takeaways or bread and cakes.
There may not be many independent bakeries or bakers on the high street any more, but children's interest in such shops may be fuelled by well- loved rhymes such as 'Five Currant Buns in a Baker's Shop' or 'Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake' and the enjoyment many children get from exploring dough and making 'cakes' and 'biscuits'.
Exploration of such a theme may begin when children chat about biscuits or bread at snack or mealtime, or someone brings a birthday cake from home. If practitioners respond positively and value these discussions, more children may show an interest and begin to discuss foods that they like and that they eat at home.
Areas of learning
1. Personal, social and emotional development
2. Communication, language and literacy
3. Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy
4. Knowledge and understanding of the world
5. Physical development
6. Creative development
Leave a message
Settings that promote effective links with home often create a dialogue, initially verbally, and later supported by a noticeboard for messages. You could post up a message to families saying, 'At the moment some of the children are very interested in bread and cakes. Could anyone spare some time to share a recipe from home? Or could you lend us a recipe book that we can use or any cooking utensils for the children to play with?' The message could be accompanied by photographs, a list of possible resources and some speech bubbles recording children's comments.
This can be the beginning of some valuable learning opportunities, encompassing all areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum and building on the children's existing knowledge and expertise. Motivation to engage in a variety of learning opportunities will be enhanced as children will approach them with knowledge, skills and confidence.
Pay a visit
Children's interest in bread, cakes and dough would be greatly enhanced by a visit to a local bakery, which may be part of a large supermarket, to see bread being prepared and baked. The visit will be particularly successful and meaningful if it involves small groups of children with their family members as well as practitioners.
If this is impossible, plan a small group visit to a shop that stocks a wide variety of breads from around the world or perhaps a specialist store that stocks a range of foods which are particularly relevant to members of the local community. Remember to take lots of photographs on the visits to support children's recollections at a later date.
Of course, the theme cannot be fully explored without lots of opportunities for children to use all of the senses to make bread, biscuits and cakes, and enjoy eating them.
ROLE-PLAY AREA
Create a bakery alongside the home corner by providing:
plastic bread
salt dough cakes, biscuits and rolls
paper bags
shopping bags
wicker baskets
price labels
'special offer' signs
order pads
a till
baking trays, loaf tins and bun tins
coins
recipe cards and cookery books
receipts
bakers' hats
'open' and 'closed' sign
an oven
mixing bowls and wooden spoons
Learning opportunities
1. Co-operation and collaboration
2. Talk for a variety of purposes
2. Writing for a range of purposes
3. Estimating
3. Using the language of position
3. Counting and calculating
6. Recreating roles and experiences, imaginative play
Adult role
- Act in role as a customer, placing orders or making decisions about purchases, or a baker, preparing or selling bread and cakes.
- Provide writing frameworks for children to write recipes, shopping lists, orders or receipts.
- Support children as they explore the resources.
SAND AREA
To the existing resources in your setting's sand area, add:
wooden spoons
mixing bowls
bun tins, loaf tins and baking trays
a plank
jelly moulds and similar sand moulds
plastic plates
Learning opportunities
1. Co-operating
2. Problem solving
2. Counting and calculating
5. Using a range of equipment
6. Exploring songs and rhymes
Adult role
- Observe children, noting significant achievements.
- Support children as they recall favourite songs and rhymes like 'Five currant buns in a baker's shop' and 'Pat-a-cake', or create their own.
Suggestions for composing songs
To the tune of 'Here we go round the Mulberry Bush':
This is the way we weigh the flour
mix the bread ...
roll the dough ...
fill the tins ...
bake the bread ...
slice the loaf ...
MALLEABLE MATERIALS
Add:
play dough in two colours
rolling pins
assorted cutters
birthday candles and holders
cake cases and bun tins
cake decorations
cake boxes and paper bags
Learning opportunities
2. Counting and calculating, exploring shape and size
4. Exploring materials
6. Exploring texture
5. Developing motor skills
Adult role
Engage the children to talk about shape, size, number and patterns by asking questions such as:
- I wonder how many more cakes we need to fill the tray?
- How many cakes do you think will fit in the cake box? What way can we find out?
- What do you think would happen if we kept on rolling? How big would the cake be?
- Shall we see how we can make patterns on the biscuits and cakes?
BOOK AREA
Add:
assorted fiction and information texts about bread and bakers, including
'The Little Red Hen' story
flour bag
salt dough loaf
bowl and wooden spoon
ears of corn
puppets of the animals from 'The Little Red Hen'
a magnetic board or wedge and magnetic story props from the story
Learning opportunities:
1. Working together as part of a group
2. Retelling and creating own stories using props
2. Exploring books
6. Using imagination in stories
Adult role
- Share books with individuals and pairs of children.
- Model the use of information texts and the language of stories.
- Support the children as they retell familiar stories and create their own.
GRAPHICS AREA
Add:
recipe books and cards
writing frameworks for shopping lists, recipes, orders
salt dough biscuits, cakes, pies and bread
real empty boxes and packets of bakery products and ingredients
zig-zag books and mini stapled books
a large card book called 'Our Recipes'
Learning opportunities
1. Making links with home experiences
2. Talk for a variety of purposes
2. Writing for a range of purposes
4. Selecting and using appropriate tools
6. Using imagination in art and design
Adult role
- Respond positively and value children's independent attempts at writing.
- Plan shared writing sessions to explore the written materials and to model the use of the writing frameworks (which can then be added to the role-play area for children's independent use).
- Support the children as they use words and pictures to write their own recipes and stick them in the shared book.
- Create situations that promote creativity: So, what if we were making a birthday cake for a giant? How many eggs do you think we would need? What could we mix it in? How could we pour all the milk in?
OUTDOOR AREA
It's important that outdoor play isn't a repetition of indoors. In general, it should extend learning and offer opportunities for children to work on a larger, noisier or messier scale, or to use more natural resources. Consider developing a pizza take-away or outdoor sandwich bar (with delivery service) to support the bakery indoors, giving children opportunities to link their learning indoors and outdoors.
Create a 'messy mixing' table, adding different resources each day and so developing it over time by providing:
large assorted bowls and containers
large wooden, plastic and metal spoons and other cooking utensils
access to water from a tap, water butt or buckets
sieves and colanders
sand, gravel, pebbles
flour and cornflour
glitter, sequins and beads
soap flakes
shaving foam
twigs, leaves, fir cones, shells or conkers
Learning opportunities
1. Co-operation and collaboration
2. Talk for a variety of purposes
3. Measuring and estimating
4. Investigating materials
5. Manipulating objects
6. Using imagination in role play
Adult role
- Encourage children's independence and autonomy.
- Support children as they explore materials.
- Promote creativity, such as letting children mix mud pies and magic potions and cast 'spells'. Ask, what would a witch want in her birthday cake? What about a dragon?
Resource box
Collecting role-play resource boxes around predictable early childhood interests ensure that practitioners are well-equipped to respond when children show an interest in a particular topic. Such resource boxes can be added to as new items become available. It's always a good idea to have a list of the resources in the box, originals, where they came from and a reference to anything stored on a computer - for example, writing frameworks.
To support children's interest in bread and bakers, consider providing:
- a collection of aprons, bakers' hats, oven gloves, tea towels
- a collection of shopping bags, wicker baskets, handbags, purses, coins
- images of bakers, bakeries, assorted breads, buns and cakes
- baking trays, bun trays, rolling pins, cake cutters, loaf tins, balances and cooking utensils (play sets are available)
- books, rhymes and songs
- plastic and salt dough breads, cakes, buns, biscuits and pies
- order forms, menus, shopping lists, recipe cards, cook books
Exploring children's interests
Tuning in
Making time to talk to parents and carers is an important way of finding out about children's current interests and about what matters to them. Such information helps practitioners provide a curriculum that is relevant and meaningful.
Having an existing interest in a particular theme means that children approach it with enthusiasm and expertise, giving them confidence and increased motivation to engage in the activities provided. Children can use this expertise best in carefully planned, open-ended learning opportunities without prescribed uniform outcomes.
Enhancing provision
Any significant interest that a child or children may have should be explored by enhancing a setting's continuous provision - that is, by adding theme-based resources to the areas of provision that is available daily to children and should comprise:
role play
small-world play
construction play
sand and water
malleable materials
creative workshop area
graphics area
book area.
By taking this approach, children can choose to engage with the theme or pursue their own interests and learning independently. Adults need to recognise that children require a suitable length of time to explore any interests in depth and to develop their own ideas.
Adult role
If children's interests are to be used to create the best possible learning opportunities, the adult role is crucial.
Adults need to be able to:
- enhance continuous provision to reflect children's interests
- use enhancements to plan meaningful learning opportunities across all areas of the EYFS
- know when to intervene in children's play and when to stand back
- recognise that children will need a suitable length of time to explore any area of provision to develop their own ideas
- model skills, language and behaviours
- recognise how observation, assessment and reflection on children's play can enhance their understanding of what young children know and recognise how these should inform their future planning.
BOOK BOX
There is a wide selection of fiction and information texts available about bread, bakers and baking, including some great traditional tales to tell. Remember to use the local library and encourage families and members of the local community to share books.
- Little Red Hen by Jonathan Allen (Corgi)
- The Gingerbread Man by Estelle Corke (Child's Play)
- Zed's Bread by Mick Manning (Walker Books)
- Bread, Bread, Bread by Ann Morris (William Morrow)
- Bread by Claire Llewellyn (Franklin Watts)
- Let's Make Bread by May Hill (Children's Press)
- Spot Bakes a Cake by Eric Hill (Puffin)
- The Incredible Cake by Catherine Vase (Campbell Books)
- Blue Bowl Down by CM Millen (Walker Books)
- Bakers by Tami Deedrick (Bridgestone Books)
- The Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord (MacMillan Children's
Books)
- Honey Biscuits by Meredith Hooper (Frances Lincoln)
- Bread by Saviour Pirotta (Hodder)
- All you need is flour (for practitioner information) (Open Sez Me
Books, www.open-sez-mefestivals.co.uk)
- Here's a Little Poem by Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters (Walker
Books) includes poems about food, including 'Sugarcake Bubble'
