June 2006

This month I went to the launch of a new Parent and Toddler group at Laycock Primary School. I have also attended the launch of the Sunshine Café, which is at the Rainbow Centre at Sure Start, Keighley. (this is the café which used to be in the Keighley Healthy Living Network building). The café is run by B-FIT (Bradford Food Information Trust) and the launch went well, with stalls, entertainment and a BBQ.

I have also completed a drugs awareness course. We were taught the signs and symptoms of various drug use, why people turn to drugs, the classifications of the different types of drugs and we even got to see some of them first hand.

As I said in last months BLOGs, I have now nearly completed Level 2 of the Cook 'n' Eat course, including the course work. I have had to plan and run a one off cook and eat session. I decided to use the Tuesday night youth activity session at Whinfield Community Centre for mine. This is what I did.

A couple of days before
  • I planned my lesson, the recipes I was going to use- I even made a little recipe booklet.
  • I did the risk assessment
  • I even made up a little evaluation form for the children to fill in
On the day
  • I went shopping
  • I set up my work stations with the equipment and ingredients they would need (cleaning all surfaces going to be used with anti-bacterial spray)
During the session
  • Explained what I wanted them to do - hand washing and health and safety issues
This is where it did not all go according to plan. I had explained what I wanted them to do. It was just a pity they did not want to do the same thing. Some of them followed a recipe but some off them wanted to make up their own. For these people, I asked them to make up a name for their smoothie, so it could go on their evaluation form. Most also tasted their smoothie to see if they liked it or not. I adjusted what I was going to do, as I wanted them to enjoy the activity.

I had only bought enough ingredients for each recipe to be made twice, so I soon ran out of the right ones, as they all seemed to want to make the same one. So we just adjusted the ingredients for some recipes. I think they got a lot out of making them and most said they would try it again at home.

My reflections
Next time, I think I would only give them a choice of making 1 or 2 recipes (1 at a time), perhaps with me demonstrating, bit by bit, on what they had to do, and with them following my instructions. Or I could just get lots of different fruit and juices for them to make their own.