We did three stations: Book-Reading (at Discovery Garden/Class), Bread-Making (outside tables), and Weeding/Planting/Observing at the Garden Bed.
'The Little Red Hen' is a perfect book tie in. Each step of the wheat/bread process is detailed- seeds, growing, threshing, milling and baking. There are several copies in the library under Call# 398.2 LIT
After reading we checked out the green wheat growing in the Science lab garden bed in the Discovery garden that the 1st graders started at the beginning of the year.
For the bread-making station I spent about 10 minutes getting ingredients in little bags/containers for each group. One group makes one loaf and needs the following ingredients:
1/2T salt
2T oil
4 1/2c flour
1/2T sugar (don't totally need this)
Yeast (see below)
You also need a bowl, large spoon, and cutting board or something to knead on (I used new cardboard from the copy room also)
The yeast container was prepared right before I left with 1 1/2c warm water, 1T yeast and 1tsp sugar. It was nice and bubbly when we used it about an hour later and I brought some yeast to show the kids what I used.
We started by putting 1/4 of the bag of flour into the bowl. (Also a great math tie-in. How many 1/4's will we use?) The amount doesn't have to be perfect- eyeballing worked great. Then we added all the other little containers.
And mixed it.
We kept adding flour a quarter of the bag at a time. When you get to the end you may need only a little bit of the last quarter. You just want to be able to start kneading the dough and make sure it isn't too sticky. This recipe is pretty flexible, and when you start kneading you can add more flour if you need. We divided the dough into four balls so it's easier to work with and everyone could knead. With a bigger group kids can also take turns with a partner.
When kneading flatten the dough, fold it, and turn it. Kneading just makes the dough more stretchy. We kneaded for about 3-5 minutes. All the kids in the group really liked it. I wiped everything down with wet paper towels when we finished.
In the end I kneaded all their balls together and put it in the empty flour Ziplock bag and stuck it in my freezer (before I ran an errand and let it sit in my hot car for an hour!).
Around 3pm the day before our next gardening lesson at 1:30pm I took it out of the freezer and put it in a large bowl I sprayed with cooking oil. I let it thaw and rise overnight (I'd say stick to within 3 hours of that timeframe). 2 hours before the lesson I shaped the dough into 2 long loaves on the pan, then an hour later baked at 350F for about 45 minutes. Fresh hot bread. Yum. Went perfectly with our next lesson- jam making.
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