What's in a mince pie?

 

 

This blog post is brought to you by Nicky Waller, one of our advisory teachers who works across the North East of England.

As we approach the festive season, we are undoubtedly looking forward to indulging in our favourite food and drink associated with this time of year. But, have you ever stopped to wonder why certain foods are associated with winter celebrations? Let’s think about the mince pie – a popular sweet treat found on many December shopping lists . . .

Mince pies are of English origin, believed to have been made to celebrate Jesus. They were traditionally oblong in shape to represent the manger that Jesus slept in as a baby and it was said to be good luck if you ate one mince pie each day during the Twelve days of Christmas.

The ingredients of a mince pie are traceable to the 13th century. Returning European crusaders brought with them Middle Eastern recipes containing meats, fruits, nuts and spices, such as cinnamon and nutmeg. Like Christmas puddings, mince pies were originally filled with actual meat, such as partridge, pheasant, rabbit, pigeon and hare.

Over time, the meat was eliminated and they became the small sweet pie we now know. The ingredients today may still be encased in suet, which is mutton or beef fat, however, the pastry is now typically made using butter and you can also find vegan alternatives.

 CIEC’s Kitchen Concoctions publication includes the activity: What’s in a mince pie? to enable children to develop their understanding of mixtures and types of change, more specifically to understand that some mixtures are permanently changed into new things and others can be separated back to the original ingredients. Giving children a real mince pie to ‘deconstruct’ is a great way for them to explore and learn about this.

 Top tip: Interspersing probing questions with practical activity works well for this activity:

 Is your pie just one thing or a mixture of things? cut a mince pie in half to reveal the pastry and the mincemeat filling, thus showing that it is made up of a mixture of at least two separate things.

 

 Can the mixture of pastry and mincemeat be separated? this can be done easily by scooping the mincemeat out with a spoon onto a paper towel or plate.

 

 Is the pastry just one thing or a mixture of things? challenge children to separate the ingredients in pastry and discuss how they have been changed permanently with heat during baking.

 Is the mincemeat just one thing or a mixture of things? separate the ingredients of mincemeat into separate piles on the paper towel or plate using cocktail sticks. A hand lens might also be useful.

 

 

 Top tip: it helps to give children a large spoon of mincemeat from an additional jar rather than the pie itself as there does not tend to be much filling in individual pies these days! You could photocopy the list of ingredients as a secondary source of information to help children to identify what they have found.

 This activity is easy to resource and uses consumables that can be disposed of safely when completed. It is engaging for children to carry out individually or in pairs whilst working safely, facing forwards in the classroom.

 Top tip: Jars of mincemeat can be bought from supermarkets all year round so you do not need to wait until December to try this activity. If you are struggling to find actual mince pies, you could bake them yourself, using CIEC’s accompanying activity: Baking mince pies.

Learning about separating mixtures and different types of change links perfectly with the National Curriculum for England statutory requirement for the Year 5 ‘Properties and Changes of Materials’ topic in science which states that pupils should:

•  use knowledge of solids, liquids and gases to decide how mixtures might be separated.
• explain that some changes result in the formation of new materials, and this kind of change is not usually reversible.

 There are many opportunities for children to work scientifically, such as reporting and presenting findings from enquiries in oral and written forms.

 

Full safety guidance is provided in the detailed teacher notes which can be found with the free resource Kitchen Concoctions. Additional COVID-secure advice can be found in the document CLEAPSS Practical Activities in a Bubble which urges schools to return to delivering a broad, balanced and full curriculum, especially for practical subjects like science, D&T, and art. This means getting back to doing hands-on activities, investigations and enquiries. Remember that using equipment is allowed because it’s essential for delivering the curriculum and to support learning in practical subjects.

This is a lovely activity to share with families so we have produced an IndusTRY AT HOME resource that you can share.  Why don't you put a link on your school website?
 

 

 

What’s in a Fire Extinguisher?

This blog post is brought to you by Nicky Waller, one of our advisory teachers who works across the North East of England.

In this very safety-conscious age, where rules and regulations determine very strictly what we are and are not allowed to do, lighting fires and watching different materials burn might feel like a distant memory to an older generation. As a result, primary-aged children today may be less likely to know about what causes fire and what action to take to reduce fire hazards.

 CIEC’s activity: ‘What’s in a fire extinguisher?’ begins with a class discussion of extinguishers, buckets and blankets, and their use in putting out fires. Children will then enjoy the practical aspect of modelling for themselves how one type of real fire extinguisher works. 

Children model how a CO2 fire extinguisher works by creating carbon dioxide gas from a solid (bicarbonate of soda) – liquid (vinegar) mixture, to extinguish a candle flame.

This activity links perfectly with the National Curriculum for England statutory requirement for year 5 pupils in science which states that pupils should be taught to: ‘explain that some changes result in the formation of new materials, and that this kind of change is not usually reversible, including changes associated with burning and the action of bicarbonate of soda.’

Proving to be a favourite with Key Stage Two teachers, the activity requires simple equipment (as shown in the diagram) and minimal set up time to provide an almost instant wow factor! Full safety guidance is provided in the detailed teacher notes.

Probing class discussions will help children to make links between this ‘table top’ classroom activity and the real world including some of the jobs related to fire safety and awareness. These sorts of links help to raise children’s science capital as they see how the science that they do in school has real life applications and is relevant to their lives both now and in the future.

To coincide with this blog post, we have published a new IndusTRY at Home resource for you share with families.  Why don’t you put a link on your school website?

For a broader set of activities linked to this topic, have a look at our free resource Kitchen Concoctions.  which expands the wider topic of ‘kitchen chemistry’ by looking at creating mixtures, separating mixtures, reversible and irreversible changes, fair testing and observations over different periods of time.

Kitchen Concoctions: The Best Bubbles

Children from Ysgol-y-Lys primary school in Wales gather to see which group of young scientists has developed the best bubble mixture

The first time I came across this activity I was still teaching full time and was attending a course run by my now colleague, Nicky Waller.  I am not going to lie to you, I had much more fun than a middle aged lady should be having with some washing up liquid and a bubble wand!  We had been challenged to investigate the proportions of three ingredients (washing up liquid, glycerine and water) to develop an economical bubble mixture that would make the ‘best’ bubbles, and I was determined that my team would ‘win’.

Top Tips: If you ask people to find a mixture that produces the ‘best’ bubbles without giving any more guidance, it is likely to lead to some interesting discussion.  After a while they will realise that they need to think about what is meant by best; it could be the size or the quantity of the bubbles or how long they last for example.

Deciding how they are going to measure bubble size is yet another challenge – my favourite that I have seen children chose over the years being … popping the bubbles on sugar paper, which leaves a lovely measurable ring!

I have delivered the session myself many times in the intervening years both as a primary teacher and in my current role.  I have run it with various groups including groups of teachers, parents and with children from nursery through to year 6, including in mixed age groups.It never fails; participants are always fully engaged and, if approached carefully, there is a high degree of relevant discussion and science learning.

Full details of the activity, including teacher notes, risk assessments and activity sheets can be found in our free resource Kitchen Concoctions

Because it can be done in mixed age groups, works well outside and is cheap enough to provide enough resources for each child to have their own equipment this activity could easily be adapted for socially distanced circumstances.  However, it does need to be approached thoughtfully if it is to move beyond being  more than ‘a fun thing to do’.  Having said that, it is also important not to move children too quickly to formally measuring and recording their recipes as they benefit from an initial period of play, exploration and discussion before formulating their method.

The challenge of devising an economic yet effective bubble mixture for a ‘toy manufacturer’ is an engaging start to this activity.  The poster is provided as part of the free online resource.

Top Tip: Do give children small containers to work with as this forces them to produce smaller quantities of bubble mixture.  I know from bitter experience that larger containers will lead to them using industrial quantities of washing up liquid!

After the initial exploratory phase, children work together to work out the ratio of ingredients that produces the ‘best’ bubbles, while keeping the costs of ingredients as low as possible (there are lots of opportunities for the application of maths at this point).  It can be tempting to organise children to work efficiently, and difficult to give children space to make their own mistakes and ‘muddle along’; for a conscientious teacher this can feel as if you are not doing your job properly.  I find that making a few explicit notes on my planning helps me to feel better about this ‘hands off’ approach.

For teachers brave enough to take this approach and then allow time afterwards for a discussion to evaluate how they worked the learning opportunities are immense, especially if there is time for children to repeat the activity.  At this stage I used to add an extra level of challenge by providing more than one brand of washing up liquid (preferably in different colours; not all washing up liquids are green).

Developing an effective product and reporting the results is engaging for participants of all ages, and helps them to understand the diversity of science related careers.  This helps to raise children's  science capital.

Children will need to find ways to present their findings to the toy manufacturer that set the challenge and this will inevitably lead to further discussion and the opportunity to use their literacy skills, and maths too if they decide to use a table and include costings.  I find that enthusiasm is maintained throughout in a way that doesn’t always happen with many other ways of recording science as children have a real reason to share their results.  If your children send their report to ciec@york.ac.uk they will be delighted to receive a reply from the ‘toy company’ that set the challenge.

This is a great activity to share with families so why not provide a link to our IndusTRY AT HOME page on your school website?

This post is by Jane Winter, one of our advisory teachers who works in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

What's in a mince pie?

With Christmas fast approaching would you like an activity that combines exploring mince pies with practising different types of scientific enquiry including identifying, classifying and sorting and using secondary sources?  Wouldn’t it be even better if that activity gave your children the opportunity to apply some tricky scientific vocabulary in a meaningful and engaging way? 

  

  

One of the activities in our free resource, Kitchen Concoctions, “What’s in a mince pie” does just that.  The lesson has been designed to help children understand that some mixtures can be permanently changed into new things whereas others can still be separated into their original ingredients.  It also helps children to understand what a mixture is and that there can be mixtures within mixtures.

Children work in pairs or small groups to break a mince pie in half and to explore what it is made of.  They are asked to consider whether it is just one thing or a mixture of different things.    They discover that although the pastry is made up of more than one ingredient it seems to be one thing, and can no longer be separated back into its separate ingredients. 

They then use a tooth pick and hand lens to carefully examine and separate out the individual ingredients from a spoonful of mincemeat taken from a jar, they initially find that many of the ingredients can be separated out.  However, when they use the ingredients list (from the side of the jar) as a secondary source they realise that not all of the ingredients are still visible and they can no longer be separated from the rest of the mixture. If they then take part in the extension activity to bake their own mince pies they are able to observe change over time as they notice the changes that happen to both the pastry and the mince pie when they are heated.

This activity, alongside the other eight exciting activities in Kitchen Concoctions, can be downloaded for free at http://www.ciec.org.uk/kitchen_concoctions/.  It contains full teacher guidance for all of the activities described, which is particularly useful for hard pressed teachers at this hectic time of year.  To receive a free printed copy of our acclaimed resource ‘Working Scientifically’, let us know how you get on using the mince pie activity with your class.  You can do this by leaving a comment on the blog or by tweeting to @ciecyork.

What’s in a Fire Extinguisher?

This week's activity can be found in the CIEC resource 'Runny Liquids' which can be downloaded from http://www.ciec.org.uk/kitchen_concoctions/

This week we continue to explore CIEC’s popular resource for primary teachers, ‘Kitchen Concoctions’, which has been updated for the new academic year 2017/18. Nine revised, exciting science activities (with teacher guidance) can be downloaded for free at http://www.ciec.org.uk/kitchen_concoctions/

Activity 9: ‘What’s in a fire extinguisher?’ has been significantly revised to begin with a class discussion of extinguishers, buckets and blankets, and their use in putting out fires. Children then enjoy the practical aspect of modelling for themselves how one type of real fire extinguisher works by creating carbon dioxide gas from a solid (bicarbonate of soda) – liquid (vinegar) mixture, to extinguish a candle flame.

This exciting activity links perfectly with the National Curriculum for England statutory requirement for year 5 pupils in science which states that pupils should be taught to: ‘explain that some changes result in the formation of new materials, and that this kind of change is not usually reversible, including changes associated with burning and the action of bicarbonate of soda.’

Proving to be a new favourite with Key Stage Two teachers, the activity requires simple equipment (as shown in the diagram) and minimal set up time to provide an almost instant wow factor! Full safety guidance is also provided in this revised version of the resource.

The activity also includes detailed teacher notes with ‘Questions for Thinking’ to probe children’s understanding of the processes taking place. Teachers have commented on the value of having updated cross curricular links to the English curriculum as well as suggestions for progression to outdoor learning and Forest Schools materials.

Nicky Waller       

What’s in a bar of soap?

Last week we announced the relaunch of our popular Kitchen Concoction resource which can be found at http://www.ciec.org.uk/kitchen_concoctions .  This week we are featuring the activity What’s in a bar of soap? In this activity children focus on developing the skills needed to follow and amend recipes, linked to the industrial context of soap manufacture. 

Children in Ashwell School Hertfordshire developing soap bars

Through practical activities children develop their understanding of accuracy, measuring, reading scales, ratio, collaborative working and product development. They also experience irreversible changes through the manufacturing process, as they combine solid and liquid ingredients together.

Children are shown a ‘Strictly Classified recipe’, to stimulate a class discussion about how precise recipes ensure product consistency, and how unnamed ingredients, labelled a-k, can help develop recipe confidentiality in an industrial context.

Using the Strictly Classified recipe encouraged the children to think about how products are made in industry, combining liquids and solids together by following a step by step process. This was useful as it identified some of the skills needed for their own soap activity.                                                                             Year 5 Teacher

While carrying out the activity children are given the opportunity to work in small ‘companies’; each child is assigned a role within the company  such as  Communications Officer or  Resources Manager.  They then work to develop their own soap bars from soap noodles, glycerine and cosmetic ingredients. 

An element of competition is introduced, as the finished bars must be able to be handled, as well as looking and smelling appealing. Although the children are given a recipe and process to follow, an element of product development is also involved, as they decide which colours and fragrances to use.

We loved developing our own soap bar, ours used strawberry and blueberry fragrance and we added blue colouring, so we called it ‘Berry Bliss’                                                    Year 5 girl, Mary Exton School, Hertfordshire

A benefit of the updated resource is that teachers can click on a video link within the notes which demonstrates how the soap noodles and soap bars are made in industry. This enables the class to see how the processes they use in the classroom are also used on an industrial scale. At every stage of the recipe the children are encouraged to make careful observations and discuss how the mixture is changing.

Of course, often the key learning comes when mistakes are made. Failed recipes, that are too wet or crumbly to handle, provide great opportunity for discussion and develop problem solving skills. The children are then given the opportunity to adjust their recipes, using the knowledge gained of the ingredient functions and processes from the activity, to amend and improve their bars of soap.

 An important feature of the resource are the ‘Questions for Thinking’ which support teachers to ask open ended questions which  assist with the discussions that arise.

The key questions allowed some super discussions about how to change the recipe to improve their bars of soap and how to plan an investigation into this in a systematic way. 

                                    Year5/6 Teacher, Foxton School, Cambridgeshire

As soap is made through an extrusion process, the resource also provides a quick and easy link to the Industry – Animated website, opening up online interactive follow up activities, where children can learn about industrial extrusion via interactive animations.

So, if you are looking for a resource to help develop the skills of product development, apply mathematics and create opportunities for working scientifically then don’t delay and explore Kitchen Concoctions today!

Su Menine

Kitchen Concoctions - Bubbles! 2017

 Collaborating and manufacturing bubble mixtures, altering ratios of materials

We are delighted to announce that CIEC’s popular resource for primary teachers, ‘Kitchen Concoctions’, has been updated for the new academic year 2017/18. Nine revised, exciting science activities (with teacher guidance) can be downloaded for free at http://www.ciec.org.uk/kitchen_concoctions/

Activity 5: ‘What’s in a bubble mixture?’ has been one of the most popular activities and can easily be adapted to suit to the full primary age range. The updated version begins with the new, eye catching competition poster in order to promote class discussion focusing on how industrial scientists continuously research and improve recipes, including bubble formulations. Teachers might also wish to download and use the new Kitchen Chaos cartoon strip as a starting context.

The activity culminates in the engaging challenge of children creating their own ‘best bubble’ mixture by trialling, adapting, recording and evaluating different ratios of liquid ingredients. The revised activity sheets and interactive planning tools offer support for those children requiring a structured approach to planning, carrying out and recording throughout the challenge and there are also new resource sheets enabling children to work in a more open and creative way.

Further features of the revised Bubbles activity include: signposts to prior learning, science vocabulary, extension or home-based activities, questions for thinking and updated safety guidance. The activity ends with some innovative suggestions for linking with industry and working with STEM ambassadors as well as links to another popular CIEC resource and website The Science of Healthy Skin.

Timing how long each bubble lasts, repeating for accuracy

Jenny Harvey and Nicky Waller