Pauline Milsted Pauline Milsted

British Science Week 2023

Our third blog in our series for British Science Week 2023 is looking at how we can support scientific learning through participating in cooking and baking activities with children in the early years. Cooking with children is a great way of support scientific learning, from making observations, working collaboratively and developing their language skills…

Connections

10th - 19th March 2023

Blog 3 - The opportunities for scientific learning through cooking activities.

Our third blog in our series for British Science Week 2023 is looking at how we can support scientific learning through participating in cooking and baking activities with children in the early years. Cooking with children is a great way of support scientific learning, from making observations, working collaboratively and developing their language skills. To support specific knowledge applied to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics); through hands-on practical life experiences. For example, measuring ingredients whilst cooking, learning about cause and effects, liquids and solids, changes in materials and so on.

Baking Bread with Children

Baking bread with children in early years settings used to be one of my all time favourite cooking activities to do. It is rich with supporting so many areas of learning across the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage), from working on those physical skills, hand-eye coordination, muscles development in arms and hands for writing, to supporting mathematical learning whilst they measure ingredients. But additionally baking bread is great for children who are learning about changes over time and cause and effect. As they learn to make observations and talk about what they see, for example, the dough rising (or growing) before popping it in the oven. The change between the dough and the cooked bread. There are lots of opportunities here for children to develop those all important STEM skills that we talk about and make connections between their observations.

Or the simple observations of the reaction that happens with yeast, warm water and sugar. Have you ever mixed your yeast with warm water in a bottle and placed a balloon over the end to see what happens? As the yeast reacts with the sugar, it lets of the gas of carbon dioxide and inflates the balloon. Find out more here.

Connections and Cooking

This years theme for British Science Week is connections. Learning about food is a great way for children to make connections in their everyday discoveries. Everyone needs food and food can be a fantastic way of opening the doors to many other areas of learning and development. For example, the British Science Week Activity Pack shares an early years activity idea for how does food get to our plate. Click here to learn more.

Cooking with children is a great way to open up discussion around food, where does it come from? How do we make the flour to go into our cakes? An endless amount of questions and opportunities that can be extended in a variety of ways from learning about how a flour mill works to planting your own vegetables in the garden to use whilst cooking. This is one of the fantastic things in the early years, we can ask those questions alongside the children, become curious learners with them and develop our own ideas.

As well as the endless connections children are going to develop whilst participating in cooking activities and learning about the ingredients, carrots are hard - tomatoes are soft. Learning about how sugar dissolves in warm water, or how mixtures change over time e.g. a cake mixture goes from a liquid consistency to a solid. What an amazing awe moment for a 2 year old? They are physically learning so much about cause and effect through these activities.

2 More Things to Try Cooking this British Science Week

Chocolate Shredded Wheat Nests

Observe and talk about:

What happens to the chocolate when it gets warm?

Why is the chocolate melting?

What will happen if we put them in the fridge?

What happens to the chocolate when it cools down?

Vegetable Soup

Observe and talk about:

Where do all the vegetables used come from?

Talk about vegetable properties, how do they grow?

Talk about what happens to the vegetables as you cook them.

How does the soup change in consistency?

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Pauline Milsted Pauline Milsted

British Science Week 2023

As a director of the company I passionately believe that every child has a scientist within them. And it is our job to nurture children’s natural curiosity about the world around them….

Connections

10th - 19th March 2023

Blog One - Why are we promoting and doing British Science Week 2023?

Join us for our special series of blogs all about British Science Week 2023. This first blog will look at unpacking the why behind British Science Week. Why do we participate in British Science Week? Why have we decided to promote it as a company? And why is science education important in the early years? We also look in this blog post at discussing what are STEM skills we can observe within our early years settings.

Why participate in British Science Week?

There are many possible benefits and reasons why to participate in British Science Week and I think as always it is important to reflect on why, before we decide to engage. The reason for this is that there are hundreds of special days, weeks around the world and we simply cannot do them all! Some will suit our early years settings, our ethos, our unique approaches and some will not (and that’s okay!!).

What I love about this week in particular is that we promote children’s critical thinking, curiosity, active learning and opportunity to explore, play develop and make connections! I think that fits in perfectly with our mini-scientists that we have in any early years settings. I personally feel that British Science week provides the opportunity for a catalyst for scientific learning that goes beyond the designated week. It gives us the time to refocus, reenergise ourselves, get enthusiastic again for scientific learning and share what science in the early years actually is with parents and carers.

Children are little scientists.
— Jean Piaget

Why are we promoting British Science week 2023 as a company?

As a director of the company I passionately believe that every child has a scientist within them. And it is our job to nurture children’s natural curiosity about the world around them. In order to support the critical thinkers and innovators of the future. To promote children’s ability to make connections and think of their own ideas. Science and also the addition of STEM education I believe is instrumental to developing curious, innovative and critical thinkers.

Why is science important in the early years?

Often when we think of science in the early years we think about the educational program Understanding of the World that is outlined in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) 2021.

Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them ... In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world.
— Department for Education (2021)

We often place science under the making sense of our physical world, learning about animals, or plants how they grow. Or how seasons change from one to another through building upon children’s first-hand experiences. However, we know that high quality settings that promote curiosity, the characteristics of effective learning and an ambitious curriculum go above and beyond what is outlined in the educational program of the EYFS.

But also science isn’t a separate subject to learning in the early years, when children are playing, exploring and learning they are often beginning to develop simple scientific concepts and understandings. For example, “The car goes faster when we make the ramp steeper” - therefore, applying scientific knowledge around the impact of gradient, speed and distance among other concepts. When we think about science in the early years, we often also extend this into STEM education and focusing on developing what we call STEM skills.

What are STEM Skills?

This are the skills that children are developing through STEM education that are going to help them to be lifelong learners, as well as develop their STEM knowledge. These are:

Critical thinking, innovation, creativity, hypothesising, testing, imagination, observational skills, collaboration, passion, open-mindedness, resilience, commitment, communication, planning and preparation, curiosity, self-motivation and to be methodical and logical.

Research suggests that is much more important to support children to develop the above STEM skills, then to simply impart scientific knowledge. As children develop an autonomy over their learning, have higher levels of engagement, and also become lifelong learners in a world that is ever changing. Our role is to nurture the above STEM skills, to equip our children to become problem-solvers through the challenging, hands-on active STEM curriculum that we provide.

What’s next for our blog series?

Over our coming blogs we are going to explore this years theme of connections for British Science Week in more depth and what this could translate to in our early years curriculum (what we want the children to learn) and pedagogical approach (how we teach). Here is a list of the coming blogs.

  • Blog 2 - Connections - Starting with a question to support child-led learning and the influences of the HighScope approach plan-do-review on child-led learning.

  • Blog 3 - Connections - The opportunities for scientific learning through cooking activities.

  • Blog 4 - Where to start with developing a STEM curriculum in the early years?

  • Blog 5 - Connections - The power of children' developing observational and effective communication skills to scientific learning.

  • Blog 6 - Connections - Enabling Environments - Top tips to promote connections through your environment.

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