Blog
The Great Kindred Bake Off
Welcome to The Great Kindred Bake Off! Throughout August we will be setting our families, nurseries and staff a baking challenge.
Weighing, measuring, learning about ingredients, kneading… the learning and development opportunities are endless. Why not join the challenge and find out how cooking and baking can help your child develop life skills, self-confidence, creativity and a time for you to bond together and have fun as a family.
Children’s health and wellbeing is at the heart of what we do. A cornerstone to this is teaching our children the benefits of healthy eating, how food fuels our bodies, keeps us safe, fit and well and that food should be an enjoyable, social experience to bring people together.
Cooking, especially baking is lots of fun, and offers a wealth of learning and development opportunities that children enjoy so much they don’t even realise they are learning. But, over the last few years, we had noticed that baking and cooking wasn’t happening as frequently at home and in the nurseries as we would have liked.
2020 has seen a change in behavour. Children, families and staff have enjoyed baking and cooking together over Lockdown and we’ve seen a rekindled love and passion for baking as a family.
We want all our nurseries to encourage the love for this fundamental teaching and learning experience with our young children. We thought there is no better way to bring back baking than by having our very own Great Kindred Bake Off! The aim is to get children in our nurseries and at home baking regularly.
Our competition
Over the next three weeks we will launching a new baking challenge to our families and staff to try at home. Watch our @inspiringkindrednurseries facebook page every Tuesday to receive our challenge sheet. Then post a picture (no cooked goods in the post or to our nurseries please!) of your creation to the facebook page by Monday night by 7pm to be in to receive our Star baker prize! See details below.
Learning along the way
As if that baking and a bit of friendly competition was not going to be fun enough here is some learning opportunities that will naturally take place when baking with children.
Bilateral Co-ordination (using both hands together in a coordinated way):
- Rolling balls of dough
- Using a rolling pin
- Flattening dough or pastry in a tray
- Sifting flour or icing sugar
Eye Hand Coordination:
- Pouring in to or out of a jug
- Spooning ingredients into paper cases/ trays
- Squeezing an icing bag
- Decoration cakes and biscuits
Hand Strengthening
Remember when we have talked previously about school readiness and strengthening those muscles in children’s hands and fingers, this will do just that!:
- Squeezing icing bags
- Sprinkling decorations or cheese
- Rubbing pastry dough together
- Kneading bread
- Pressing dough
Spatial perception & Planning:
- Following a recipe this can be simple words to also support early literacy skills or a visual recipe using pictures, diagrams and photographs
- Sequencing – what comes first, what comes next….
- Cutting using a cutter
- Working out how thin to roll the dough
- What is the best way to cut the dough to get the most biscuits?
- What gas is needed when placing the cookies on the tray as they will spread
- How should we cut to get as little waste as possible?
- How much mixture do we need in each cake case?
Maths:
- Sequencing
- Measuring
- Sorting
- Counting
- Simple addition and subtraction
- Weighing
- Mathematical language – more, less, full, empty
- Simple fractions
Language:
- Labelling ingredients
- Receptive language – following direction
- Description – what are you doing? Why are you doing that?
- Prediction – what will happen next? How long will it take to cook?
Science:
- Changes from dry to wet ingredients
- What happens when we add the eggs?
- Watching mixtures grow and rise
- What happens when we add heat? Add water? Put it in the fridge?
Who would have thought that something as simple as preparing and cooking a pizza or baking some cupcakes would provide this much learning for a child? Whilst not forgetting it will also be giving them life skills, self-confidence, the opportunity to be creative and a time for you to bond together and have fun as a family.
Competition details
For the next three weeks from 11th August we will be posting baking challenges for our families, nurseries and staff to join in. We want to see you kneading, mixing, weighing can creating delicious baking creations. Every week we’ll be picking a star baker.
How to enter?
Post a picture (no cooked goods in the post or to our nurseries please!) of your creation to our @inspiringkindrednursries facebook page by Monday night by 7pm to have a chance to receive our Star baker prize. We have three challenges throughout August.
Don’t forget to add to your post – your name, name and flavour of your creation and #kindredbakeoff
Annie Tierney, our Head of Operations, will pick a staff and family winner which will be announced on Tuesday morning.
Obviously, we can’t taste your yummy creations, so winners will be selected for the best home cooked, interesting flavours, beautifully presented bakes. And if it has received a taste test by a mummy, daddy or grandparent we’d love to hear what they say.
What are you waiting for? Get those mixing bowls out, aprons on and get baking!!!
Week two challenge:
18 August: Biscuit week
Welcome to The Great Kindred Bake Off! We would like you to create a tray of biscuits. It could be some jammy dodgers, or chocolate cookies or traditional shortbread. What’s your favourite biscuit? This is great one for small hands to get messy and have some fun decorating them. We can’t wait to see them! Ready, steady, bake!
Don’t forget to post your picture of your final creation here on our facebook page: include your name, name and flavour of your creation and #kindredbakeoff
Find out more how to enter here>>