This week we continue with our investigation on bread baking. We turned our focus on how flour is made. The teachers brought out wheat berries and invited the children to look at them and to touch them with their hands. As children look at the berries with a magnify glass, some of the children decided it might be interesting to put the berries in their mouth. The teachers refreshed the children’s memory by re-reading the book about wheat and how wheat can be made into flour.

Today, we borrowed some mortar & pestle from another classroom and invited the children to crush the wheat berries into flour. While the children were not as interested in the end product as we had anticipated, they were much focused on the process of crushing the berries and handling the berries by moving the berries from one container the next and by feeling them with their hands. The children were able to observe cause and effect, practice fine motor skills, and develop ideas to how things are made through this process.