Rollplay at Derwent Lower School

(Similar session with my daughter's year group at St Marks primary, Basingstoke)

This week I'm making bread with each of my 3 grandchildren's (9, 7 and 5) classes, starting with:

Monday 20th June. (Further down you'll find my report and pics from the other two sessions.)
First session today, with year 3 - otherwise known as 'Foxes'. 18 children including my granddaughter Olivia, who assisted me admirably.

We arranged the tables in a semi-circle, 2 to a table, one bowl to each pair.

We were making bread rolls, basically (any shape), to this recipe:
1 mug flour, quarter of a teaspoon of salt, 1/3rd mug of lukewarm water and one teaspoon of yeast .
After showing the youngsters how I mix and knead a dough, I demonstrated a few shapes of animals, and also some fancy dinner rolls - with the following results:

BREADMAKING AND EDUCATION

Maths:

Since 1 mug of flour requires 1/3^rd of a mug of water, the ratio of flour to water is 3:1.

A full mug of flour is easy to judge, but 1/3^rd of a mug of water is a bit more tricky. (The mug should be just under half full.)

(Fortunately, adding a little extra flour or water produces the required result – a soft, slightly sticky dough.)

Salt: Salt is not essential, but, if using it, a quarter of a teaspoon is about right. So the student needs to judge this amount.

Water: The temperature of the water is important – it should be blood heat, between 35-40C. 2 parts of cold water to 1 part of boiling water in a jug will achieve this, roughly. (I like to compare it with bath water! You don’t jump into a bath without checking the temperature first.)

Yeast: A rounded teaspoon of fresh yeast is dissolved into the water.

Fractions:

Dividing the dough into 8 pieces (to make rolls for instance). This means cutting the dough into halves (2), quarters (4) and 8ths (8).

1/3^rd or 2/3^rds  of a mug of water

Breadmaking at Glebe Primary School

As regular readers of my blog will know, I'm in the habit of occasionally visiting my grandchildren's schools to make bread with them and their classmates. They've recently moved schools, and last year I made some bread with Alfie, my 6-year-old grandson and his class.

Since November, 8-year-old Olivia has been trying to organise a similar session - but Christmas got in the way, and it's only now that we've been able to manage it.

It finally got underway this morning, and, in two sessions - first the boys, then the girls - all 29 children in the class made a batch of bread rolls.

Here are some pics I took of the session. I'm not allowed to show faces, but they do give an idea of the activity and the results:

The dough is mixed and the children are kneading or beginning to make their shapes. Those are my demonstration shapes in the middle of the table. 

And here are the results:

Whole lot of shaping going on! (Sorry!)

The boys were more into hedgehogs...

...whilst the girls were more into hearts.

The rolls were placed on their identifying bags to be collected later

I have to say I received great support from Karen (TA) and Mrs Flowers (returning teacher?) - they helped enormously!

Later in the evening I received a lovely email from the class teacher:

Hello Paul

Just a quick note to say thank you so much for this morning.
The children all enjoyed themselves and were thrilled when
they had their rolls at the end of the day. I've eaten two
as well* and they were very nice. 


Janice


Which was much appreciated!


*Of my demo rolls, which I left for the staff. Wouldn't want anyone to think that Janice was pinching the children's rolls! :-)

Rollplay at St Mark's Primary School, Basingstoke

My daughter teaches year 5 at this school, and last year, working in groups of 7 or 8, I made iced buns with about 45 of the youngsters from this school - about 2/3rds of the year group.

This year I wanted to reach everyone in year 5 - about 77 kids if everyone turns up. After the experience I had in my grandchildren's school the week before, I knew I could do this easily!

The bread roll recipe (with suggestions for shapes).

Starting at about 8.50 I ran a session in my daughter's class - 23 students, 7 groups of 3 and a pair. I did exactly the same as last week - with one major difference.

"What would happen," my daughter said, "if you didn't use any yeast?" This question came after a fairly lengthy explanation of why we should use lukewarm water  to dissolve the yeast. "Why, nothing, really. The dough would just sit there." So then I thought that instead of the one demonstration from me of how I put a batch of dough together, my daughter could also make a batch - only this time, without any yeast . Which is what we did.

Here's the pics from this session:

We did the same in the second session:

Yeast-risen rolls - and unleavened ones!

And the third session:

I had a bit more time to take pics in the  last session - and I still got away from the school around 3.20, after teaching 74 kids in the day!

Once again, great support, great teachers and great kids!