Bread Unit and Lesson Plan

Bread! Could there be a better subject to study in the cold, dark depths of winter? Behold, I answer for you: there could not. We baked and baked every day. And we loved it.

My favorite two books were The World in Your Lunch Box (there were only a few parts specifically about bread, but it's just an interesting book all around!) and Loaves of Fun. The history in Loaves of Fun was really comprehensive and well-written---lots of interesting facts I didn't know before!

The children were so AMAZED with yeast and what it can do (and that it's aliiiive!). Though I know I've told them how it works while we've been making bread in the past, I guess doing some of the experiments/demonstrations this week really brought home the point in the way me telling them hadn't. This book had a few good experiments to try, and I also found several good sites online:

Red Star Yeast had some interesting projects

Here's a simple one (members only, but let me reiterate how much we LOVE The Happy Scientist---WELL worth the $20 subscription fee)

This experiment with gluten was kind of messy and interesting. There are some others on this site too.

It would have been fun to go to a grist mill for this unit if we hadn't already done that---actually I would have considered visiting again, but they aren't open in the wintertime.