Food and Healthy Eating

turning the handle to watch the dough lengthen
Making Pasta

As part of our theme on food and healthy eating we invited a chef to come in and show us how to make fresh pasta. We decided to make tagliatelle!
The process:
After weighing the durum flour, it was sieved into a bowl and a well was made in the middle. An egg was cracked and placed in the middle. The flour and egg were mixed together. We kneaded the dough and then it was shaped into rectangular pieces. The dough was passed through the pasta maker several times to make it the right thickness. We all had a go at turning the handle and we saw the dough lengthen. The tagliatelle attachment was added and we were amazed to see the pasta appear. Everyone took home a bag of fresh pasta for their supper.

Food for Festivals.

During our project we focused on food for festivals. This included Chinese New Year. As you can see opposite, all the children helped to decorate Upper Nursery with an enormous Chinese dragon that stretched the length of the room.
The room was also decorated with Chinese lanterns. This was part of our preparation for our Chinese lunch.
The children helped to prepare the lunch by chopping up various fresh vegetables. These were then added to noodles and stir fried together. We had fun having a go at using chop sticks. It was also lovely for us all to have lunch together.

We read a wonderful story about a dragon called Nian. This dragon used to scare the people of a village in China. A wise man told the people of the village that if they made loud noises and decorated their houses with red it would discourage the dragon from coming back. It worked!!So, to this day, people all over the world celebrate Chinese New Year with drums and gongs and fire crackers. They decorate their homes with red, just in case Nian should come sneaking back!

We acted out the story of Nian. As you can see below some of us played the part of the dragon whilst others were the
townspeople with drums and gongs!!

 

 
using chopsticks during our stir fry lunch




We all had a go at Chinese writing taking part in the play