This week we have been exploring Harvest Festival, which is a celebration of the food grown on the land. It is traditionally held on or near the Sunday of the Harvest Moon, which is the full Moon that occurs closest to the autumn equinox. This celebration is often associated with the act of sharing with others, which is why we have been collecting biscuits that the children will share with our local lunch club when they return after half term.
We started the week with a selection of root vegetables. The children explored these, with lots of lovely language about textures, colours and size. We also talked about how these vegetables are grown in the ground, so we decided to bury potatoes in our growing area and ‘harvest’ them ourselves. The children became very involved in using spades to dig in the soil to find the potatoes. We then observed children extending this by taking their finds and using them both in the mud kitchen, and the home corner – using playdough knives to ‘chop’ their potatoes and serve them up to one another! We’ve also had potatoes in the paint area; used for potato stamping pictures and potato rolling art!
We’ve also read the story of the Little Red Hen this week. This story follows Little Red Hen as she harvests the wheat that she’s grown; she cuts it, mills it into flour and then bakes it into bread. At each point of this process she asks for help, but is told, “not I, I’m too busy!” We’ve shared this story, using story props and asking children to help with the repeated refrains from the story. This inspired us to have a go at making our own bread. Children enjoyed helping to make the dough and were excited to see the dough rise after it was ‘proved’. We introduced lots of new words such as, sieving, kneading, and proving, and then enjoyed the bread, still warm from the oven at snack time. Making their own snack offered children a real sense of achievement.
To stay with our ‘dough’ theme, we also enjoyed making our own playdough again this week, using a slightly different non-cook recipe! This offers a great opportunity to watch how materials can change… we start with powdery ingredients and liquids, and combine them into “squidgy” dough; this helps form the beginnings of understanding material science and how things can change.
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:
Why not explore vegetables at home? Let children feel the different textures, talk about the sizes, sort them into colours etc. Also, look at all the vegetables you can buy in the local supermarket, are there any you haven’t seen before? What do they look like?
We started the week with a selection of root vegetables. The children explored these, with lots of lovely language about textures, colours and size. We also talked about how these vegetables are grown in the ground, so we decided to bury potatoes in our growing area and ‘harvest’ them ourselves. The children became very involved in using spades to dig in the soil to find the potatoes. We then observed children extending this by taking their finds and using them both in the mud kitchen, and the home corner – using playdough knives to ‘chop’ their potatoes and serve them up to one another! We’ve also had potatoes in the paint area; used for potato stamping pictures and potato rolling art!
We’ve also read the story of the Little Red Hen this week. This story follows Little Red Hen as she harvests the wheat that she’s grown; she cuts it, mills it into flour and then bakes it into bread. At each point of this process she asks for help, but is told, “not I, I’m too busy!” We’ve shared this story, using story props and asking children to help with the repeated refrains from the story. This inspired us to have a go at making our own bread. Children enjoyed helping to make the dough and were excited to see the dough rise after it was ‘proved’. We introduced lots of new words such as, sieving, kneading, and proving, and then enjoyed the bread, still warm from the oven at snack time. Making their own snack offered children a real sense of achievement.
To stay with our ‘dough’ theme, we also enjoyed making our own playdough again this week, using a slightly different non-cook recipe! This offers a great opportunity to watch how materials can change… we start with powdery ingredients and liquids, and combine them into “squidgy” dough; this helps form the beginnings of understanding material science and how things can change.
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:
Why not explore vegetables at home? Let children feel the different textures, talk about the sizes, sort them into colours etc. Also, look at all the vegetables you can buy in the local supermarket, are there any you haven’t seen before? What do they look like?
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