Backyard Baking
Backyard baking is so much fun. Props required? A bowl and maybe a large spoon. Your child might need a little encouragement to get started, but after that they will run with the activity for quite some time. If you have cooked with your child they will probably take to this activity more readily. Here are some open ended questions you can use to help the activity along if necessary:
- What are you baking today?
- What ingredient will you need next?
- How much of that ingredient will you need?
- What will you do with your mixture?
- How do you know when it’s ready?
- What does it taste like?!
Make sure you establish some ground rules, especially if there is anything in the garden unsafe for your child to pick (be wary of plants with milky white sap). My daughter decided to make “Weed Soup” for her recipe. She picked leaves and flowers from weeds, and also added macadamia nuts, bark and a range of other different leaves. She sang “Stir up the cooking oh deedle-deedle-dum…” (a Playschool cooking song) while she worked and served the soup up in plastic cups when it was ready!
For an extension on this activity you could encourage your child to write down their “recipe” when they’re finished. A simple recording of their recipe only involves writing a title at the top for them, and allowing them to draw their ingredients. For slightly older children you can label their ingredients under each picture. If your kids love this activity why not make a recipe book and glue in each different recipe?!
I have an insatiable desire to see more of your garden, you tease us with little snippets here and there and it seems it is a vast space with so much potential for wonderful fun! And I wish we had macadamia nuts in our yard.
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Mmmmmm yummo
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Lovely activity! Another followup would be to share a picture book like Wombat Stew, or Dumpling Soup. Oh, and I just thought of a great poem, Sink Song. Here’s a quote:
“Scouring out the porridge pot
Round and round and round!
Out with all the scraith and scoopery,
Lift the eely ooly droopery,
Chase the glubbery slubbery gloopery
Round and round and round!”
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Oh yes, of course! I should have thought to add Wombat Stew as a reading suggestion
Thanks for the Sing Song poem too. You are a fountain of knowledge.
From cooking food to making potions… that is where we’re at with this fun activity. Hours and hours of concentrated imagination outside… such a fab idea!
My kids are huge fans of ‘outdoor cooking’ or making mud pies. We have had to set some ground rules ourselves, such as, don’t take the dirt from mummy’s pot plants
On the right day and in the right mood, they will do this for an hour unaided. Aaah bliss 
OH the soups my kids have made! And I get to see it all again with miss 2
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We used to do this as kids too, although I seem to recall mine had large quantities of mud involved…
Thanks for the inspiration Cath. Think we will give this a go tomorrow in our back yard.
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