Due to the success of the Valentine Cafe and the current play interest of role playing bakers, the children will set up a cake stall on the following dates/times:

Wednesday 22nd March

Thursday 23rd March

Monday 27th March

Tuesday 28th March

Wednesday 29th March

Each day a small group of children will prepare and set up the cake stall, and serve at the end of the session.  It will be open to all adults at 12:00 and 15:45 each day.  On Monday it will open at 15:00 to allow the early finishers opportunity to serve.

Cakes and biscuits will be priced at 20p each.  Children will be developing an awareness of the use of money in their role as shop keepers.

Please sign up for a time on the sheet in nursery.

We started our baking today!  Here are some photos to whet your appetite!

We had a very busy and successful café with both the Morning and Afternoon Groups!

For the last week we have been preparing by making signs, lists, deciding what to bake/drinks to serve and prices to charge.  We made menus and place cards.  We baked cinnamon biscuits and scones, and made and decorated cupcakes.

Today we opened our doors to families and friends for our Valentine’s café.  The children took orders, served the customers and took the money at the end.  We hope you enjoyed it!  Please leave a review below or complete a review sheet at nursery tomorrow (or both!).

Preparations!

Our Café!

Today lots of us dressed up in different costumes. We played with worms in the cauldron, carved pumpkins and dooked for apples. We had great fun! Here is some video of both groups singing the ‘Hairy, Scary Castle’ song, followed by some photos so you can see what we got up to!

This week the Morning Group made Butternut Squash Soup (similar to pumpkin!).  We used peelers and knives to prepare the vegetables.  Both groups made and tasted Irish Soda Bread. The soda bread got a bit sticky!  We marked the dough with a cross on the top, dividing it into 4, using a knife.  (According to Irish folklore this is to this is to let the fairies out!)  Here are some photos of us busy cooking and tasting the soup.  The recipes follow the photos.

Butternut Squash Soup:

1 butternut squash
3 carrots
1 onion
1 tbsp vegetable oil
water/stock
2-3 tbsp milk
herbs (we used rosemary and sage from the garden)
black pepper
a ‘pipkin of salt’ (like in the story ‘Pumpkin Soup’ by Helen Cooper)

Peel and chop the vegetables (add others too if you want). Add them to a large pan with the oil. Cover and ‘sweat’ the vegetables for 10 minutes on a low heat until beginning to soften. Add the water/stock to cover the vegetables, herbs and seasoning. Simmer until the vegetables are soft. Purée using a hand blender.

Irish Soda Bread

We used James Martin’s Irish Soda Bread recipe.

Please let us know if you have other soda bread recipes we could try.

Children from the Morning and Afternoon Groups received their certificates for completing their balance bike training.  As you can see, they look very proud of their achievements!  They have come a long way since their first lesson, and were completing figures of eight on the bikes!

A further block of training will start on Monday 7th November 13:30-14:00 for 6 weeks, and the final block will be in January.  There will be space available if you feel your afternoon child would benefit from repeating the training, and you can commit to coming along to support them.

4 groups of children are currently receiving balance bike training and they are doing really well.  So far we have learned the names of bike parts and the importance of wearing a helmet.  We have practised steering and braking, and played games such as Sleeping Snakes, What’s the Time, Mr Wolf? and Sea of Sharks.

The children’s listening skills are improving, and they are following instructions as well as learning to ride balance bikes.

We really need adult support for the sessions to run – if someone can come along and support each child it would help them get the most out of the lessons.  We only have two more weeks of lessons for the current groups.  Further groups will run in the afternoons after the October break for the children who haven’t had their training yet.

Here are some photos of us this week: