Mince pies and all that!

I invited our home school group round today for the children to make mince pies and play together, it was a real success although I may have a pastry carpet for some time to come. We let the kids just play with the pastry dough after a good session mixing it and as been as S preferred making snowmen and women with hers I didn't expect any mince pies to get made. She made some lovely figures and covered them with snow (flour) after a good long mess with the dough we had a few cut out shapes for the base of the pies while J cut out some star shapes for the lids. The children who had been playing with the dough had shaped, rolled, cut and played with it for over an hour and had loved it. Thinking it over now makes me more aware of my previous jobs in childcare settings where the result was more important than the process, making mince pies in nursery or school would be a production line, the finished result not always the child's work and just a show piece to prove to parents that the child had actually 'done' something! Well our kids did do something today, something wonderful and it wasn't the mince pies lol.