Grateful Harvest: Baking in Kindergarten

I started my teaching career as an early childhood teacher, and my most favorite times with children were cooking with them.  Over the years, I tried out so many recipes with children: Monster Cake, Cranberry-Orange Pie, Blustery Day Oatmeal Cookies, and Watermelon Ice, to name a few. It’s gratifying to know that some of the recipes I’ve made with young children have become traditions within their own families.  One recipe that I love sharing with children is Bread Pudding in a Pumpkin Shell. It is a unique recipe that is simple but elegantly presented.  When I taught in a cooperative nursery school that also had its own garden, the children were able to plant, grow, harvest, carve, and cook the pumpkins.  This farm to table process was very rewarding for children and they became invested in working both in the garden and kitchen.

In the years that proceeded, whether with a school garden or not, I brought cooking into the classroom because it had so many beneficial connections to math, literacy, organization, cooperation, and. communication. Plus, it was just good old plain fun and delicious too.  Though, I have cooked with children throughout the seasons, fall is probably my favorite time to explore recipes with children. 

This week, my friend, Molly, who teaches kindergarten, let me borrow her students for three days to explore pumpkin baking.  The children had picked four small baking pumpkins, which had been in their classroom since Halloween.  I have been very busy with my usual learning support duties, but I knew that this pumpkin baking was important to the children, especially since Molly would be away from school for a few weeks.

On the first day of our pumpkin exploration, we washed the pumpkins, and I carefully cut the tops off each one.  Then I divided the class into four groups, and each group got a pumpkin, a tray, and a sturdy spoon.  Before, sending the children off to remove the seeds from pumpkins, I modeled how to work in a group and share the spoon.  In the back of my mind, I thought that I was going to have to referee some of the groups, but to my surprise all the children scooped and separated the seeds from the pulp cooperatively.  Of course, there were squeals of, “Oh!  Yuck!” But to my surprise these five- and six-year-old worked together peacefully getting the job done.  Once the seeds were removed, we washed them, salted them, and put them on a baking tray with a drizzle of oil.  While the seeds were roasting, I asked the children to estimate how many seeds were in each pumpkin.  I love how wild Kindergarten number sense can be.  Numbers are still magical to small children.  So, I got responses that ranged from three hundred two hundred to  ten thousand hundred.  Soon, it was time to go home, so we stored the roasted seeds and put the pumpkins in the refrigerator for our next baking project.

The next day, I returned to kindergarten to make bread pudding in a pumpkin shell.  I hadn’t made this recipe for twenty years, so I wasn’t sure how it would turn out or if the children would enjoy it.  We have the luxury of having a small teaching kitchen, so I was able to bake with the class in two groups.  They loved slicing the bread into cubes, cracking eggs, pouring milk, and stirring in cinnamon, sugar, and vanilla.  Many were not fans of raisins, so we made two pumpkin bread puddings with raisins, one without raisins, and one with just roasted pumpkin.

Again, our kitchen time ran into dismissal time, and we would have to wait for the taste test on the next day.  On the afternoon of the third day, I arrived with the beautiful pumpkins.  The children gasped and laughed when they saw them, and they barraged me with questions and comments: Can we eat now? When can we eat them?  Which one has raisins?  I don’t want the plain one! Where are the seeds?  This type of excitement would have put me teetering on the edge during my earlier days of teaching, but now I’m like the grandmother-teacher, and I find joy in their exuberance.

The children got busy washing their hands and setting paper plates and plastic forks.  I got busy cutting pumpkin wedges, and our substitute teacher spooned out a copious amount of roasted pumpkin seeds.  To my delight, every child tried the pumpkin bread pudding and they all said they liked it.  I was amazed.  Some children asked for seconds and thirds!  They passed on the plain roasted pumpkin, but I couldn’t blame them.  The pumpkins tops and leftover roasted pumpkin will go to the compost pile. I am so grateful that I had this time with Molly’s kindergarteners.  Their abundant enthusiasm, curiosity, and culinary skills warm the heart.