The Restaurant Project

“Stand aside for a while and leave room for learning, observe carefully what children do, and then, if you have understood well, perhaps teaching will be different from before.”

― Loris Malaguzzi

Having the opportunity to observe children at play is by far one of the most rewarding aspects of this job.  A child at play is bound only by the limitations of their imagination.  Seeing the world around you transform through the eyes of a child is beautiful, magical, invigorating.  The classroom becomes a space station, a zoo, the ocean, a prehistoric land.  The possibilities are endless.  The beauty of being an adult in this environment is the way in which the children draw you into their world and help you re-imagine things that logic tells you are not possible.  Opening the door to a magnificent wonderland of imagination that has been lost to us through the passage of time.

An ongoing observation of this imaginative play is what sparked what we titled "The Restaurant Project".

"Mrs.  Cruz!  Come to our restaurant!"
"What would you like to order ma'am?"
"We have a really big menu!"
"We have everything you like!"
"It's a fancy restaurant!"

During morning meeting the class expressed a strong desire to create a real restaurant in our classroom.  We discussed the different components that make up a restaurant and decided to focus first on what type of restaurant we would like to be and what would be on our menu:

A:  Food like a hot dog!  Then it would need a bun!

G:  It's a shell restaurant!  That means it has shellfish!

P:  Ice cream!  Pizza, and chocolate chips in the ice cream.... and maybe salad for people who like salad.

C:  Steak and hotdogs and pizza!  Giant pizza!  With pepperoni and cheese and sausage and olives!

We began the process of planning and creating a menu for our restaurant:

P:  It has to have numbers to tell you how many the food costs.  It tells you how much the food is and how many sides come with it.

A:  These are square cookies.   And all these cookies are $4.  This cookie has a cut spot, so it's only $2.  And this circle one is $3.

P:  Sometimes it shows what the restaurant looks like on the menu!

Throughout the next few weeks we used a variety of different materials in the classroom to make up the ingredients for the items on our menu.

We discussed which menu item would be the most fun to make and decided to try and make pizza!
P:  We need cheese, sauce, ketchup, tomatoes, and a large bowl to put the dough in!
M:  I made pizza before!  You need cheese, and dough!
A:  I use a powder to make dough at home!  I can ask my mom, she has the recipe!

The class began to show a strong interest in the roles of the various people that we see inside a restaurant.  We had lots of ideas and questions about what each person actually did in the restaurant and decided that the best way to answer those questions would be to meet those people and ask!  With the help and support of our amazing friends at The Eddy we were able to plan a field trip to go behind the scenes of the restaurant and meet the many different people that work there!