PELC - Fairhaven

Hello everyone!

Just a reminder that All Preston Early Learning Centre's will be closed on Monday, May 20, 2024, for the Victoria Day long weekend!

Enjoy!

Banana Bread!

Banana bread is one of our main morning snacks that the children thoroughly enjoy.

The children continue to ask questions about the foods they are eating like, “How do we make this” or “What ingredients do we use for this?” They have learned so much about how different ingredients and measurements of the same ingredients can make various things.

They have made many kinds of breads and doughs that all consist of different recipes. A few children have noticed that we need a lot of salt to make playdough but just a little bit for cookies. This allowed them to understand more deeply how these foods that they love are made. They have also discovered the joy and pride of doing it themselves!

We decided to make banana bread as it was coming up for snack this week. The children were asked what ingredients they thought we would need for banana bread.
Many of them said bananas, flour, and sugar and someone asked if we needed eggs. The recipe also called for Greek yogurt but instead, we substituted it for a non-dairy yogurt so everyone in the centre could enjoy it.

The children took turns cracking the eggs, adding the wet ingredients, and stirring the mixture. Elizabeth noticed that two of the egg yolks didn’t break as they were added to the bowl and commented on how they looked like eyes.
As we mixed, Kyuss saw that the batter was turning yellow, Madisson asked everyone what we added that could be turning it yellow. After some thinking a few children said bananas but then realized that we hadn’t added them yet, then they remembered the egg yolks were yellow and that must be the reason why.
After the wet ingredients were all mixed, we started the fun part, mashing the bananas!

Brittany brought in a pastry blender and potato masher to mash the bananas as we weren’t sure which would work better. The children remembered that we used the pastry blender when they made biscuits for afternoon snack a while ago.
As each child tried out the pastry blender and potato masher, they discovered that they liked using the potato masher more and that it worked better.
Once we folded in the dry ingredients the children noticed that it didn’t look the same as other bread they have made. Brittany explained that this recipe was more similar to batter for pancakes than the bread dough they had gotten used to seeing.

Once everything was mixed, we poured the batter into the loaf pans and took them to Dawn in the kitchen to bake.

The next day it was served for morning snack and the preschoolers were so proud as they said, “we made that for everybody” and “this is good banana bread!”

Jam Making!

After we made butter, it was time to make jam!

The children used their child-safe knives and cutting boards to cut the strawberries into small pieces.
Once the strawberries were all cut up, we added them to a pot with sugar, a splash of lemon juice, and a pinch of salt.

We put the pot on the hot plate and brought the mixture up to a low boil. Kipton was very enthusiastic with each step, as he was stirring the strawberries he said, “I’m a real cooker!”

This inspired Danijela to find our chef’s hat and oven mitt from the dramatic play area. Each child then had a turn to wear them while they mixed the jam.
The oven mitt protected their hand from the steam as the children said it was hot and they could see it coming out of the pot!

Kyuss noticed that the jam was getting “juicier”, and we explained that the juice was the liquid coming out of the strawberries from the heat.
The solid strawberries were turning into a liquid just like the day before when the liquid cream had turned into solid butter!
These were great chemical reactions the children got to experience.

After Elizabeth was done being a “real chef” she took a step back and said, “wow, that was good science, Brittany!”

Once the jam started to thicken, we turned off the heat and let it cool. When it was cool enough, we poured it into a jar and put it in the fridge to enjoy the next day on the buns they made.