Children Visit a French Bakery

Bakery field site visits like this one sparked the children's interest and fueled their investigations in bread making.

Bon Appetit! A preschool class discovered a French bakery near their school, and all the exhilarating smells and shapes led to a number of intriguing questions. How do you make bread? What makes the crust? Do you like cinnamon or chocolate bread the best? These queries led to five months of absorbing, child-directed activities.

Because of their visit, the three- to five-year-olds investigated various aspects of making bread and created an entire bakery in their classroom. Some inventive children constructed an oven, adding a stone and a wheel like the oven they saw at the bakery. Two resourceful groups of four- and five-year-old girls made their own bread. As a final project, four-year-old Eric, who was into superhero characters, created a diorama of a "batman bakery."

The children's explorations into bread included literature, mathematics, science, language, and other areas of study. They read books about bread and acquired new vocabulary words like grain, kernel, knead, and fungus. They learned French phrases like bon appetit and merci beaucoup. The class practiced their skills in writing and speaking. As they investigated breads, the children used measurement techniques and tools, collected data, graphed results, and conducted scientific research. They also experienced different people's heritage and culture. Through bread making, these young people gained knowledge, skills, and confidence in their abilities.

During the first bakery visit, the hostess fed the children's interest by offering tastes of different breads.

Phase I — Let's Get Started

A walk in the neighborhood aroused the children's curiosity about the French bakery across the street. The hostess at the bakery fed their interest by offering them tastes of the goodies on display. Because the class seemed so engaged at the bakery, the teachers used an anticipatory web to explore the topic of bread and began to get excited about the possibilities for a project.

Later, the class revisited the bakery to view the stone oven and bread-making machines. They watched a baker knead some rolls. Back at school, the teachers explored what the children knew about baking bread through webbing. They also asked the children what they wanted to learn about bakeries and making bread.

During these visits, the children gathered information about tools, equipment, and skills needed to make and sell bread as they observed the bakers at work.		Before and after visits to the bakery, the teachers used webbing with the children to explore the growth in their understanding of bread making.

The classroom bakery was filled with tools and materials that the children observed at the real bakeries

After more discussion, the children decided to build their own bakery, named it "Ohio Bakery," and began creating a menu. Wheat and oat grains were placed on the sensory table for a variety of activities. They practiced using a sieve and grinding flour with a coffee grinder.

To expand the children's learning, the teachers gathered recipe books and books related to bread and bread making. They also displayed panels of photos from the recent bakery visits. The bakery donated sample loaves of day-old bread, and some parents brought in bakery artifacts.

Observational drawing focused children's attention on noticing differences and similarities among types of bread.

On their next visit to the French bakery, the children focused on the display cases for ideas to use in their own bakery. Many sketched what they saw on clipboards. In order to gather more information, the class decided to take another field trip to a bakery that baked many different types of bread. They created a notice for their parents illustrated with their drawings of breads.

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