After determining that the children are truly interested in the topic of baking bread through the focusing activity of kneading dough, we began our first investigation of the basic ingredients of bread making: flour and water.

At group time, we read a book about wheat in which children and teachers talk about the various items that are made from wheat (e.g. pasta, muffins, cake and of course bread). We invited the children to explore flour in the sensory tub. As the children explore, we talked about the texture of the flour and introduced words such as powdery, soft, and silky. We then slowly added water to the flour. The children began to feel stickiness of the dough. While some children expressed their experiences verbally by saying “sticky”, “yew”, “wet”, or “It’s like playdough”, others expressed through their actions by constantly going to the sink and washing their hands.

Our next step is going to involved following a bread recipe and bake bread from scratch.