Flour and education

Pupils from Inglewood Infant and Community School in Carlisle - our September breadmaker winners - inspired their parents to start making bread

"Mums and dads commented on how their children enjoyed the experience of making bread at school so much that they decided to start baking bread at home," explained senior teaching assistant Wendy Leighton.

Seventy pupils from the whole of Year One rose to the challenge of making their own bread as part of the school’s ‘Ourselves and Being Healthy’ topic.

“Our particular focus was on food and where it actually comes from,” said Wendy.

“Thanks to the donation of Carr’s flour we were able to work right across the curriculum.

“Baking bread covered food technology, observing the changes in the ingredients before and after cooking was relevant to science, and numeracy was involved in measuring out the ingredients.”

In literacy the children used ‘wow’ words to describe how the bread felt to touch and also how it tasted and smelled.

“The children also used computers in ICT to write down the instructions step by step,” added Wendy.

So successful was the project - and so eager were the pupils to learn more about flour - that the school is now arranging to take the children to a working mill.

“The enthusiasm of the children has been heartening to see and having won a breadmaker and more flour from Carr’s we’ll be doing a lot more breadmaking this year as well,” said Wendy.

Caroline Dale, marketing manager of Carrs Breadmaker, said: “I am particularly delighted to hear that parents are now baking bread with their children at home.

“It’s a great family thing to do and everyone gets something out of it."

Below are some photographs of the pupils making bread with Carr's flour (click to view an enlarged image):

Ian Griffiths, product manager at Panasonic, added:

“This sounds like a fantastic project that has transferred from the school to the pupils’ individual homes.

“I hope the breadmaker adds another dimension to the pupils’ breadmaker over the coming year.”

Each month throughout 2009
Panasonic and Carrs donated a breadmaker and a supply of flour to the school submitting the best portfolio of work.