Nothing tastes better than food you’ve made yourself.
Recently, the three and four year old children at Ehrlo Early Learning Centre’s (EELC) Gladys McDonald location had the opportunity to create chicken noodle soup from scratch.
“We were eating soup and sandwiches for lunch. The children started talking about what their favourite soup was, and they all agreed that they love chicken noodle soup,” said Gladys McDonald staff member Chandra Skerjanec.
From there, the idea to create their own soup was… cooked up. Over a few days, the children made fresh noodles, chopped up vegetables with a hand-held food processor, and threw it all in the pot with some chicken to create homemade chicken noodle soup. They also made biscuits, adding oregano and garlic in with the dough to make them a little more special.
“We cooked up a test batch of noodles for the children to try. They tried them, and they asked, ‘why aren’t they hard? When we make noodles at home they’re always hard,” Chandra said with a chuckle, explaining to her young chefs that they could make their homemade noodles hard, but it would involve drying them out, first.
“They just thought that was really neat, that the homemade noodles were a different texture.”
But that wasn’t all – six of the 10 children involved in creating the meal had the opportunity to bring it to Ranch Ehrlo Society’s Francis Street office, where Karin Duff, director of Early Learning, and several other staff members enjoyed the fruits of their labour.
“It was a huge moment of pride for them. Not only did they get to have lunch in an office – a lot of the kids had said they’d never been in an office building before – but you could really see that sense of pride when people would come and ask ‘what are you guys doing?” They finished the visit with each child having photo op at Karin’s desk.
“They were just so excited that they got to share something they had created themselves.”
Experiential learning is a key component at Ehrlo Early Learning Centres, and the soup-making was no exception.
