It’s National Baking Week!
Baking has many educational benefits for children. To mark National Baking Week, our Year 1 Teacher and After School Cookery Club leader, Mrs Russell explains why it is such a useful skill to learn.
Baking provides lots of great learning opportunities for children. Not only is it a life skill that they will benefit from as they grow older and throughout adulthood, but it also develops educational skills.
Measuring out ingredients and counting improves mathematics. Talking about what they are doing and understanding instructions improves literacy skills. But it is not just academic skills that can be improved through baking.
We know how much the children like to get involved with the mixing, sprinkling and decorating when baking. These types of actions will improve both their hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.
Getting the children involved in the baking process teaches children what goes into their food and how it is made. Not only that, taking part in baking can also encourage children to be more adventurous and more willing to try new foods.
Baking together with your children can improve relationships, communication skills and help to build confidence. In addition, working through a recipe teaches children planning skills. Helping your child to organise themselves in the kitchen where they are enjoying themselves (and learning without realising!) can encourage them to adopt organisation and planning in other situations.
Children can also make observations of what happens to the ingredients when they are mixed together, put in the fridge or put in the oven. Do they change colour? Do they get harder or softer? Does the mixture get bigger or smaller? The kitchen can be like a science lab with experiments happening everywhere!
So, on a rainy day, why not get all of your ingredients out and bake something yummy to eat. Most importantly, have fun!
Here is a recipe our wonderful Pastry Chef, Mrs Murphy would like to share with you all especially for National Baking Week:
If you would like to try out some more recipes at home, Mrs Bhogal and the catering team have shared some of their other favourite recipes which are available here.