Under the instruction of their teachers, our students at Kindy City International Preschool had a great time making their ‘angel cakes’ during the ‘My Angel Cakes’ project.
In April, Kindy City International Preschool organized ‘My Angel Cakes’ – a multifaceted development project for the students.
‘My Angel Cakes’ project aims to foster good habits such as washing hands and correct table manners, as well as enabling the students to learn more about bread and identify all the different varieties it comes in. This project enabled the notions of bread to become much more comprehensible to them. The students are able to differentiate between soft cakes and firm cakes. The so-called soft cakes are those that are tender, moist, sponge, easy-to-chew and easy-to-pinch, such as, cream puffs, sponge cakes, sweet cakes and sandwiches. On the other hand, crispy rice crackers, which produce a ‘crack’ sound when chewing, or cakes that need to be cut with knives are classified as firm cakes.
The process of shaping the cakes is an exciting experience for the kids as it is a great outlet through which to encourage the students’ creativity. This not only helps them better their artistic sense in terms of making their own choices of colors and sizes but it also boosts their fine motor skills. They get to fill the donuts and practice using scissors to cut out slices of pizzas with their hands, or decorate cakes with their fingertips.
Using utensils that fit their hands to spread strawberry jam and peanut butter onto a sandwich.
Promote fine motor skills by transferring flour into cups without spilling it out.
With the flattening and kneading the dough activity, their little fingers are used for holding and grasping; squeezing and stretching repeatedly also strengthens hand muscles and enables increased flexibility.
In front of each kid is a tray of rice paper wrapper, green bean paste and grated coconut meat. The teachers show them how to make sweet spring rolls out of these ingredients.
The challenge for the kids in making their favorite sweet spring rolls is to fold the rolls with its filling well – tucked in the wrapper and roll up the wrap tightly.
The students’ faces are covered with flour, but they don’t seem to care, since their focus is on the Tapioca Coconut Melting Cookies, introduced by Mrs Huynh Thi Hong Linh and the teachers at Kindy City. The kids then pan-fry the flour with pandan leaves, stir well and firmly press the flour into the molds.
To make the grilled coconut cakes, students are instructed to beat the eggs and stir well with the other ingredients such as flour, eggs, sugar, salt and grated coconut. They then use their hands to shape the batter into balls, carefully placing them into cupcake liners before baking.
Grilled coconut cakes taste rich and smell good, they are crunchy on the outside yet soft on the inside. The students are attracted by the golden appearance of the cakes.
Each ‘Angel Cake’ is the outcome of the continuous learning process in the past 10 months of the students at Kindy City International Preschool. Well, do kids love cakes? Yes, of course. So, why wouldn’t they finish eating the cakes in their hands? It’s because they want to share ‘their first Angel cakes’ with their beloved parents.