As part of our healthy eating awareness strand in this terms
learning we have been exploring different foods and practising our skills of
cutting and peeling fruit and vegetables. As a culmination to this we read the
story of Pumpkin Soup and then planned for a day preparing vegetable soup and
making or own fruit kebabs.
We began by collecting the correct sticks to light our fire
with. These had to be snappy sticks, showing that they were dry enough for us
to use. We then sorted our sticks in to graduated sizes; small to start the
fire, medium to get it going and large to keep it going. We then arranged our
logs into a circle, ensuring there were enough for each person to sit on,
finally arranging four large sticks into a square around the fire – we had to
work hard to push the logs into position.
Later in the day we cut and peeled the vegetables, learning
to safely hold the food and carefully cut downwards with the knife, we are very
good at this now.
The following day we made sure that we were wrapped up warm,
ready to start our fire. We had to check which way the wind was blowing and
NEVER ever walk across the fire circle. While the vegetables were cooking we
used peelers to whittle our sticks to use for toasting marshmallows and making
wands out of and we also practised using a fire steel to make sparks with; this
was a little tricky but we didn’t give up.
Once our yummy vegetable soup was cooked we were able to
taste it and toast our marshmallows, ensuring that we knelt by the fire and
counted to 10 for safety before eating them.
Meanwhile fruit kebabs were being cut and prepared ready for
a healthy snack. In the following days the children took their experiences into
their learning, building their own fires with resources outside, preparing
their own soup concoctions and writing ingredients lists and making kebabs at
the snack table.
What a fantastic week!
