🌾🍞 The Journey of Bread 🚛👩‍🌾 From the Farmer to the Shop Keeper 👩‍🍳

🌾 Do you eat grass?

That might sound like a strange question—but stay with me for a moment. You don’t eat the kind of grass you see on a lawn… but what about bread? 🍞 Yes, bread! Bread is made from wheat, and wheat is a kind of grass. So in a way… you do eat grass!

Did you eat some bread today? Maybe toast for breakfast, or a sandwich at lunch? Where did it come from? 🌾

No one really knows when people began to plant wheat instead of just gathering it from the wild. But we’ve found wheat in ancient human settlements from over 8,000 years ago! Someone, long ago, had a clever idea. Instead of eating all the seeds they had gathered, they saved some and planted them. Those clever people were the very first farmers. 👨‍🌾

Farming changed everything. People could no longer move from place to place—they had to stay near their fields taking care of their crops. They settled down and built homes near their crops. When the wheat was ready, they harvested it and began to grind it into flour. That’s called milling. We’ve even found a millstone used for grinding grain that is over 7,500 years old! 🪨

Millers became very important people. Over time, people made clever inventions like watermills and windmills to make grinding faster and easier. ⚙️ But that's another story.

Now people had flour. What next? They mixed the flour with water, sometimes with a bit of yeast, salt, sugar, or oil—and then they baked it. The earliest bakers made their bread over fires. Later, they built stone ovens. 🔥 In ancient Egypt, we’ve found beautiful paintings showing bakers at work. They even had hieroglyphs for wheat and bread! Actual loaves of bread have been discovered in tombs!

🏛️ A long time ago, in Ancient Rome, bakers were very proud of their work. They were so important that they made a special team, called a guild, where they worked together and looked out for each other. The job of baking was taken seriously—one baker from the guild even got to have a seat in the Senate, where big decisions were made for the whole country! 🍞✨Bakers were free men, which was very special, because many other workers at that time—like builders or metal workers—were often slaves. But bakers were seen as important people, because everyone needed bread. Their work helped feed the whole city!

And now? Today’s bakeries make so much bread that they often sell it to shops far away. That’s especially true now that we use machines to make more bread at once. But even with all these machines, people are still behind every step.

🧺 I brought here the Interdependency Card Material – Packet A1

Remember how we were talking about where we get our bread from?

Let’s look at these cards. The first one tells us: Where do we get our bread from? (Lay this title card to the left.)

We usually buy our bread from a shopkeeper. ( Place the shopkeeper card to the far right (from the child’s point of view). But… where did the shopkeeper get the bread? From the baker. 👨‍🍳 ( Lay out the baker card to the left of the shopkeeper. ) A baker might sell bread to lots of shops. But what does the baker need to bake the bread?The baker needs flour, and the flour comes from the miller. ( Lay out the miller card to the left of the baker. ) The miller grinds wheat to make flour. But who grows the wheat? The farmer. ( Lay out the farmer card to the far left of the miller. )

So the shopkeeper got the bread from the baker, the baker got the flour from the miller, and the miller got the wheat from the farmer. 🌾 The farmer grows the wheat. ⚙️ The miller grinds it into flour. 🔥 The baker bakes the bread. 🏪 The shopkeeper sells the bread to us.

But how does the wheat get from the farmer to the miller? There has to be a transporter. And from the baker to the shop? Another transporter ! 🛻 ( Add three transporter cards, one between each pair and slightly above the line. )

Now, do you think the baker does everything alone? Let’s think—what happens at the bakery? The baker might need a dough-maker… The dough-maker might need an oven-tender… And the baker might also need a packager.

Can you think of any other helpers? Invite children to imagine who else might help in a shop, or in the mill or in the farm. It looks like a lot of people are involved in bringing us bread!

That’s the journey of bread—from the farmer, to the miller, to the baker, to the shopkeeper—and finally, to you. And don’t forget the transporters—the people who carry the wheat, the flour, and the bread from one place to the next, making sure everything arrives where it needs to be. 🚛 Even at the bakery, the baker is not working alone. There might be a dough-maker mixing the ingredients, an oven-tender carefully baking the loaves, and a packager wrapping them up to send to the shop. It takes a team.

So the next time you take a bite of bread, remember how many people were part of that story. How many hands helped bring it to your plate. This is called interdependence—people depending on one another to meet their needs and help their community. 💫

💭I wonder… What about the milk ? Or the clothes you wear ? Who helped bring those to you?. You can make your own set of cards and draw all the helpers. Here—I have some empty figures waiting to be given a job. Let’s see what roles you discover! ✏️🧑‍🎨🧺

With Montessori joy,

Vanina 😊