Harvest season is over and you’ve spotted some stray wheat stalks left in the fields? You can bundle them to create a decorative wheat centerpiece…or pick them up to show your kids that flour comes indeed from grain! 

Prep time: 15 mins ¦ Activity time: 2 hours¦ 5 years+¦ Easy

Making flour at home is fun, but it takes some time. If your kids are younger than 5 or a bit restless, allow time for some other activities in between the different stages of the process!

What you’ll need:
Ripe wheat stalks (if they are not ripe, they will not grind properly and will squash instead); sieve; manual coffee grinder (this is what I found at home that was strong enough to grind wheat grains, but you might be able to use something else); pestle and mortar; bowl.

What you do:
-remove chaff and straw by shaking the wheat stalks
-sort grains and check for impurities

-put grains in the coffee grinder : this is the best part for kids, who love using this old machine.
What you get is crushed grains, and already some flour has formed
-use a pestle to grind grains further

-pass this through a sieve so as to separate flour from the biggest bits of crushed wheat grains, and grind the remaining grains

-ask your kids to weight the flour they’ve obtained. It will probably not be much, but they will shine with the pride of having made it from the raw ingredients!

-choose an easy recipe and use the flour (if needed, cheat by adding some store bought flour) to bake a cake: eating it fresh out of the oven will make up for all your kids efforts!