We are used to making bread together daily. Kneading the dough, cooking it, eating it.
The children worked in a focused step-by-step process to create their own pizza, and then got to eat their creations for snack. Bread making sets the stage for this work well, but pizza-making adds many layers of action on top of our basic dough-kneading process. Instead of making round doughballs for rolls, we made large flat circles of dough. Then each child spread Nora's delicious sauce around their circles with our lovely new wooden spoons. We used our "spidery fingers" to sprinkle cheese. Mushrooms and zucchini are easy-to-cut vegetables so we each used butter knives to safely cut these into small pieces and decorate our pizza circles with them. Sarah and "her helpers," Asha and Phoebe, put the pizza in the oven.
Each day now, two children go upstairs with Sarah to be her helpers, giving them a more complete vision of the baking process. Other helpers wash the bread-kneading table in our classroom. This chance to be helpers builds new friendship teams.
Parents, I want to encourage you all to include your children in home cooking. One important suggestion about that is to work at a table height they can safely reach. Another is to give them a task they can play at, not controlling the exploration of it, except through the eyes of safety needs.
Today we made pizzas! This extended cooking work is pretty exciting with the children.
The children worked in a focused step-by-step process to create their own pizza, and then got to eat their creations for snack. Bread making sets the stage for this work well, but pizza-making adds many layers of action on top of our basic dough-kneading process. Instead of making round doughballs for rolls, we made large flat circles of dough. Then each child spread Nora's delicious sauce around their circles with our lovely new wooden spoons. We used our "spidery fingers" to sprinkle cheese. Mushrooms and zucchini are easy-to-cut vegetables so we each used butter knives to safely cut these into small pieces and decorate our pizza circles with them. Sarah and "her helpers," Asha and Phoebe, put the pizza in the oven.
Each day now, two children go upstairs with Sarah to be her helpers, giving them a more complete vision of the baking process. Other helpers wash the bread-kneading table in our classroom. This chance to be helpers builds new friendship teams.
Parents, I want to encourage you all to include your children in home cooking. One important suggestion about that is to work at a table height they can safely reach. Another is to give them a task they can play at, not controlling the exploration of it, except through the eyes of safety needs.
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