A baking challenge from Mrs Mahoney

This is for a message for all our Oakwood Primary children and families.

I love baking with my children, Sophie (9) and Edward (6)!
Edward and I would love you to try baking a carrot cake like we did. We have baked this recipe quite a few times as it always comes out well and we think it is delicious. My mum, who is an amazing cook, uses this recipe now and she has tried many carrot cake recipes over the years!






Baking is a great activity for all the family. As well as enjoyment, there are extra learning opportunities for children in the form of reading, writing, maths and science!

In addition to using the measuring scales to measure the ingredients, here are some of the maths questions I asked Edward as he was baking:
• How many grams are there in 1kg?
• 100g add 150g
• Double 250g
• What fraction of the 500g bag did we use?
• What is 4 tablespoons of butter in grams? 14.3g x 4?


Don’t worry of you do not have the exact ingredients. We used:
• All white self-raising flour as we didn’t have wholemeal.
• 1 tsp nutmeg and 1 tsp cinnamon instead of 2 tsp mixed spice (or you could leave out the spice)
• Golden caster sugar instead of icing sugar
We used an electric mixer to make the icing topping but you could also whisk it by hand.
The carrot cake also works well in a round cake tin!

We hope you enjoy the egg yolk in oil video – we thought it was very interesting!
Also, Edward usually says no to cracking the eggs but agreed to do it if I filmed him! He did really well!

Good luck with your baking! Have fun!

Eating Well in Year 3!

Year 3 would like to say a big thank you to Ita, who visited us last week from Quorn to talk to us about Healthy Eating and the Eat Well Healthy Plate!

We had a great time learning about how you can have a balanced diet and we impressed her with our knowledge of different foods and ingredients.

We were also joined by Chris from Southampton City Catering, who produce our wonderful school meals.

We would like to say a big Thank You to all of them!

Y4 Roman Day

On Friday Year 4 had a busy day exploring more about Romans. We started the day off by learning about the Roman invasion. We spent the morning designing shields, cooking up a Roman feasts and designing menus for Oakwood's very own Roman Restaurant. After lunch we ate the food (lying down as the Romans did) we had spent the morning preparing. We even had our very own taste tester, just like Roman Emperors often did, in the form of Mr Taylor who checked our food hadn't been poisoned! Once we had feasted, we then went outside to practice some Roman marching drills using our shields to protect us. What a busy day in the life of a Roman!

Egyptian Feast Fun!

To start our Egyptian topic this week we have being learning about the River Nile and food and farming in ancient Egypt. As part of this we made flat bread. We then ate the flat bread along with several other Egyptian foods, as part of our Egyptian feast. We are now writing poetry about the flavours, textures and appearance of the foods.

Cookery Club - Week 2

This Tuesday the children made Jamie Oliver's salsa and nachos. We had one minor thumb scratching incident but no blood made it into the salsa! The patient resumed activity shortly.

We decided to substitute chillies for sweet red bell peppers to avoid making it too spicy. Everyone loved the home baked nachos and about half the children said they'd prefer it without the raw onion in the salsa.  However, Mr Taylor enjoyed his and Archie said "I love this salsa, much better than the one I buy at Tesco!"

If you spot any funny faces in the photos, its because someone was a little over zealous with salting some of the nachos. 

One thing I have been heartened to see both weeks so far, is the children (and parents) happily sampling their takeaway pots on the way home.

After half term we will be cooking spaghetti bolognese. 

Cookery Club Week 1

Wow! We had a fantastic first week at Cookery Club.
The plan is to enjoy cooking a variety of simple yummy meals that can easily be repeated at home. 

This week we kept it nice and simple: locating equipment, peeling and cutting safely and teamwork for the clean up.

The children were brilliant and quickly prepared and cooked a British favourite of sausages and mash.

Sadly we discovered we had no proper potato masher, so we ended up with less attractive but equally tasty buttered, slightly mushed boiled potatoes.

The next day Katie's mum said how much Katie enjoyed cooking and eating it all, including the carrots, which is apparently a first. Great news!

Next week is home made nachos and Jamie Oliver's salsa. 

Monkey milkshake mayhem!

As part of our JUNGLE topic we made delicious and healthy milkshakes! Mmmmmmm!

Egyptian extravaganza!

Yesterday to kick start our Egyptian topic Y5 spent the day exploring Egyptian culture. We found where Egypt is located, discussed what we already knew about the Ancient Egyptians, created our own Egyptian headdresses and baked flat breads. After lunch we had an Egyptian feast, taste testing our flat breads as well as other Egyptian foods.

Easter Mischief in Year R

This week we have been colouring, cutting, sticking, finger-painting and even problem-solving to get ready for Easter! We found some mysterious rhyming clues and managed to solve them, finding a basket of Easter eggs as our reward! We have also been busy in the kitchen baking some delicious Easter nests as a special treat to take home and enjoy. Happy Easter everyone!

Run, run, as fast as you can!

We have been reading, "The Gingerbread Man" and have really enjoyed baking our own biscuits to take home!

Oakwood Boards The Titanic!

Year 5 have had an eventful day aboard our very own RMS Titanic. The day started with the final preparations for our voyage (ticket and passport making). Followed by a cat walk show in our new linkway to show off our outfits.

This afternoon we set sail, celebrating with afternoon tea and dancing entertainment. Putting into practice our historical dance PE unit, dancing the waltz and Irish jig. We then found out the fate of our passengers that we have been writing our diaries in the role of (our English unit).

There were some fantastic costumes and it was a spectacular day.

The Titanic Count Down Begins!

With Titanic day on Friday Year 5 spent the day preparing. We made lots of items to decorate the hall (our Titanic) including: portholes, bunting, place mats and menu cards. We also baked some tasty scones in the kitchen ready to eat on board on Friday.

We are all really excited for our Titanic day, watch out for our passenger photos and an update of our exciting day.

Summer coleslaw challenge!

Today Year 2 worked in groups to plan and make coleslaw, choosing from a variety of ingredients.

They all worked together to chop the vegetables, grate the carrots and mix it all together. The final products were judged by Mr Taylor, who enjoyed tasting them all and deciding which the tastiest and tangiest bowl of coleslaw was!

What do you like in your coleslaw?

Pharoah fun in Year 5!

Today was the first day of our new topic, Ancient Egypt!

We had a fun filled day with lots of activities, to introduce us to Ancient Egypt. We learnt about the food they ate (including some cooking and taste testing). We then did some art work to create Pharoah accessories (practising our fine painting skills). These accessores were then worn for our feast and mummy embalming commpetition.

We can't wait to learn more fasinating facts about the Egyptians!!

Let the market research begin!

After returning from our Jude’s ice cream trip it was time to start thinking about our Jude’s challenge (designing a new flavour). To kick start our market research we spent the afternoon taste testing, thinking carefully about the appearance, texture, smell and what customers would like. This will help us design our own flavours later in the week ready to pitch to Jude.

Year 3 Cookery and Origami Day

What a super day we had on Friday. We had lots of fun cooking up a feast for our picnic. We baked sausage rolls, pizza, chocolate cakes and cookies! The best fun was our afternoon picnic eating it all! Whilst it was all cooking - we learned how to make origami picnic boxes!

Year 5 make some Easter Treats yum yum!

Today Year 5 had great fun making some 'Easter Treats'. First were hot cross bun cookies, a twist on the classic hot cross buns, then some chocolaty Easter bark. Before making them we revisited why the cross at Easter and re-capped the Easter story. Their maths skilled were very valuable in measuring all the ingredients correctly and reading the food packaging.

Year 2 Cake decorating

Year 2 have been very creative. They were given the challenge to design a cake for Easter.

After thinking about signs and symbols of Spring and Easter, we then looked at various cake designs and designed our own.

Using various coloured Royal icing the children rolled, and shaped the icing onto a plain bun.

They look delicious!!!

Happy Easter!

In Year R we having been busy learning about the Easter story and about how some Christians celebrate the holiday. We found some clues that the Easter Bunny left for us and carefully followed them to find......delicious Easter eggs! We had to use our knowledge of positional language to figure-out the clues but it was well worth it.......yum-yum! We've also been baking some special Easter nests to bring home as a treat.

Happy Easter everyone!

Run, run, as fast as you can!

You can't catch me! I'm the Gingerbread Man!


As part of our Adventures topic we have read the book, "The Gingerbread Man". We have baked our own gingerbread men and were careful not to take them out of the oven too early......so they didn't run away like they did in the story! We retold the story using puppets and have made "WANTED" posters to catch the sneaky fox! We made our own collages using cutting skills. We even used gingerbread men to find number bonds in maths!