Our Rugby Children's Food Festival 2012

As our Food Festival week in 2011 was a huge success, we decided to incorporate this children's festival into our yearly calender. This year our Rugby Children's Food Festival provided children with a broad range of learning opportunities for example, making bread in a local bakery, visiting an educational garden centre and learning how vegetables were cooked many years ago, fruit picking in a local orchards and digging up vegetables at local allotments. Practitioners, parents and Grandparents worked together to offer children the opportunities to learn about the things they eat. Some children from Great dais Pre School enjoyed making Latvian snacks with one of our parents. Toddlers got a real treat by dipping fruit in chocolate with an ex-Cadbury grandparent.

Pre-School minors created a fruit and vegetable shop in their role play area. The children took it in turns being the shopkeeper; they learnt about the value of money and exchanged conversations about what was on their shopping lists.

Children visited local food producers, when visiting the fruit orchard children learnt where and how fruit grows; the children found it very exciting being able to pick the fruits straight from the plant, wash them and then eat them.

Making bread at the bakery at Malt Kilm Farm was the next adventure for Great dais Pre School, Morris the Baker explained to the children that bread has a magic ingredient called yeast, he said, "It's live, and it breathes like me and you." The children used the scrapers to combine the dough mixture together; they moulded their dough into a hedgehog shape.

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Where oh where are all the vegetables hiding?

The children from Toddlers and Pre School Miners went on an adventure to a local allotment. As they walked around the allotment they found vegetables growing, they enjoyed being able to pick some and take them back to nursery.[slideshow id=17]

Children from their nursery in Rugby visit a fruit orchard

The visit to the fruit orchard enabled the children to understand where and how fruit grows, the children identified which fruits were which and they were able to pick some fruits which were eaten later on for their snack.[slideshow id=18]Practitioners from a nursery in Rugby create a fruit and veg shop[slideshow id=19]