Friday 1st May, 2026
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This week, we spent a morning at Old Orchard on Hampstead Heath reconnecting with a simple, age-old practice: cooking over an open fire.
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Using the tale of the Scottish bannock, a simple bread made from oats and barley, we explored how people once made food using whatever the land provided. The children quickly made the connection. This was the ancestor of something they already know well, the scone.
To support this, we shared a set of simple visual learning materials that helped bring the story to life. These illustrations showed where the grains come from, how bannock would have been made, and the kinds of tools used to cook over fire. Having something visual to refer to helped the children connect what they were doing with a bigger picture, and made the experience feel part of a longer, ongoing story.
We found these worked best as a light-touch reference. Rather than sitting down to focus on them, the children dipped in and out, using them to anchor what they were seeing, foraging and cooking in real time.
From there, we headed out to forage.
Nettles, wild garlic and lemon balm were all growing around us, and the children set off to find them. What stood out was how engaged everyone was. They were not just spotting plants, but asking questions, comparing smells, and beginning to recognise that food can come from places we usually walk straight past.
Foraging took longer than expected. Not because it was difficult, but because the children were so absorbed in it.
Back at the fire, we moved into cooking.
We chopped our foraged ingredients and mixed them into a simple dough made from ancient grain flours. Using a large iron pan with a lid, creating a kind of outdoor oven, we baked the bannocks slowly over the fire.
There is something about cooking this way that naturally brings focus. The children gathered in, watched closely, took turns helping, and learned, without it being explicitly taught, that food takes time, attention and care.
