Taking a Fall walk in our Jenkintown community is a wonderful opportunity for the children to experience community in a new way. We have been looking at our internal AFS community in a multitude of ways and felt that extending our perspective would best be understood by actually walking into the surrounding community and seeing first hand what a community may look like. The stores, restaurants, businesses , post office and fire house are places in our community that we are able to walk to and visit.
There were lots of places that we were interested in visiting, however we felt that connecting our community helper aspect of our study would best be explored if we tried to visit places where our children had selected a particular community helper to study. Two of our students are studying the role of Chefs as community helpers and interest in cooking, baking and food seems to be enjoyed by all of our students.
Prior to our visit , we engaged in a Language activity where we generated ideas about what they thought we we may see on our trip; and what questions they have and what are they may be wondering about regarding the work and role of the people who work in the bagel shop.
This is a process develops cognitive as well as language skills. Children practice language and vocabulary skills and they are learning to make projections. We use our lists after our trip in discussions which provides opportunities for children to practice recall and memory skills.
The walk was absolutely beautiful and the glorious weather added to our enjoyable fall morning. In addition to seeing the beauty of the season, we also saw several community helpers in the community working community places! We saw a n ambulance, trash truck and trash helpers, a doctor's office, construction workers fixing the roof of a building and the sidewalk, a bus and a bus driver, a bank, a church and a mail truck.
Walt, Jason and Donna welcomed us at Fill-a-Bagel and gave us a fantastic behind the scenes tour to see how bagels are made. Jason and Walt are the bagel bakers and Donna's takes care of the customers.
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We went inside a huge refrigerator where the bagels are kept before they are baked . The refrigerator was so big that our whole class could all fit inside together at the same time!
The bagels are boiled before they are baked in a huge oven that has 5 revolving shelves.
The ingredients are mixed in a very large automatic mixer and then they are placed on a conveyor belt to be cut and made into the shape of a bagel. Before the are baked, Jason sprinkles different toppings onto the baking trays depending if he is making sesame, poppy or every thing bagels.
We had a great question/answer time with Jason and Walt and the children asked a few of the questions we had discussed prior to our visit. We snacked on delicious bagel bites before walking back to AFS.
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