Benefits of Baking in Early Years
Baking with your child can be an inexpensive way to enhance your child’s development. Whether you are baking a victoria sponge or a loaf of bread, your child will experience lots of opportunities to extend their communication and language skills in a fun and exciting environment.
Benefits
- Focused activity
-
- 90% of children’s time should be open ended and as good as this is, baking is a great way to have a focused activity for adults to really focus on children’s targets and goals.
- Communication and language
-
- Listening and attention skills of the children can be a main focus of these activities where children can focus on an end goal and target.
- Activities that can be step by step for children to enhance their understanding skills of following instructions throughout the activity.
- Achievement
-
- Children get an opportunity to feel a sense of achievement at the end of these activities seeing the outcomes that they receive from the input that they put in.
- Enhancing physical development
- Baking offers opportunities for children to enhance their fine and gross motor movements. With the one handed tools and equipment available at these activities, children can extend these skills to then be embedded into other parts of the day such as using cutlery for meal times or mark making activities.
- Language rich environments
-
- Baking activities can be a language rich environment that children can be a part of. This can include new vocabulary being introduced around textures, motions, weight, capacity etc.
- A social environment
-
- Baking offers social environments for children to be a part of. It’s an opportunity to encourage and highlight teamwork and build a sense of community.
- Developing a healthy lifestyle
-
- This is an opportunity to develop children’s understanding of a healthy lifestyle and have an understanding of what nutritional values the ingredients to recipes have. It’s also an opportunity for children to extend their knowledge of the wider world and talk about where the ingredients have come from.
What we Do at Cherubs Nurseries
Here at Cherubs Nurseries we implement baking into our curriculum so our children can develop the skills mentioned above, at nursery as well as at home. All our nurseries take part in baking activities which the children absolutely adore! Some of our Nursery Chef’s and Nursery Managers have given us a deeper insight into how they apply baking in their activities at nursery.
Executive House – “We do fortnightly baking sessions at Cherubs Executive House across all age groups and rooms. (Daisies – Babies, Snowdrops – Toddlers and Pre-School) These are always lots of fun and the children really enjoy taking part. Additionally, when we hold events to raise money for our charity partners, baking is very much involved with the children helping to bake cupcakes and biscuits.
Baking helps promote all seven areas of the EYFS from developing skills, sensory experience and learning about numbers. It is also a valuable self-help skill. We share our baking activities with parents via blossom.”
Mapperley – “At Cherubs Day Nursery Mapperley the children love to bake and incorporate this into special celebrations. For example, we baked star and moon biscuits to celebrate Eid-el-fitr. The children bake with our nursery chef which gives the children knowledge and understanding of the raw ingredients and where they come from. This then opens up conversations at meal times.”
Recipe
One of our wonderful Nursery Chef’s has provided a fun and easy baking recipe for you to try out at home with your children.
Quick Cookies
Ingredients
– 225g butter
– 110g caster sugar
– 275g plain flour
– 75g chocolate chips
- Cream butter in a bowl with a wooden spoon
- Add sugar and keep beating until mixture is light and fluffy
- Sift in flour and add optional ingredients (instead of chocolate chips, you can use dried fruit)
- Bring the mixture together with your hands in a figure of 8 until it forms a dough
- Roll until walnut size balls flatten on the tray
- Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown
Resources
Twinkl – Bake Off Resources Pack
https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/bake-off-challenge-resource-pack-t-fd-1628163047
BBC Good Food – 90 Child Friendly Recipes
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/kids-cooking-recipes
My Kids Lick The Bowl – Kid Friendly Recipes and Videos
https://mykidslickthebowl.com/kid-friendly-recipes/
BBC Good Food – Children’s Baking Resources
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/review/kids-baking-set-essentials
Sitters 15 Fun Cooking Ideas
https://www.sitters.co.uk/blog/15-fun-cooking-activities-for-kids.aspx
