My lazy sunday interneting bought me to Culinate, where I read this piece called A child's place is in the kitchen. It articulates why cooking is a great thing for children to participate in.
This past week in the classroom, we cooked twice. We had an excess of carrots, so we made some carrot oatmeal cookies. The vote afterwards revealed that 9 children enjoyed the cookies and 4 did not. That's pretty good for vegetable cookies.
Our second cooking experience was for a birthday. This year, I am having the birthday child choose what they want to cook (soething special - it does not have to be a cake), and their parent comes in to help us with the cooking project. We made a vanilla cake with pink frosting, per J's request. But the result was less than stellar. It tasted like lemon bars and it did not rise at all. But everyone had a piece with a smear of pink frosting, and everyone liked it. It was a close one, though.
I think children should experience cooking - but not everyone is going to love the result. It actually allows an opportunity to talk about our different opinions on food. And as teachers, we have an opportunity to expose children to foods they might not be having at home. Involving parents also brings in foods that the classroom community might not be familiar with.
We might go a little more savory with our next recipe - some hummus perhaps. How do you incorporate cooking into the classroom?
I recently found your blog through Urban Preschool and enjoy it. I teach in a K-3 school in a rural part of Oregon, USA. I teach ESOL. My wife works in developing literacy at local preschools. She also coordinates a home preschool group. Anyway, at my work when food is involved it usually goes with learning sequence or following step by step directions. Smoothies are great because they can go either way, meaning, follow the recipe or throw it to the side, get creative, and decide if you like it. It's a great way to get your fruits and veggies, too. I know 'food art' is a hit with kids as well.
ReplyDeleteWe do a lot of cooking with our children at kinder ... 2 groups of 27 children ... in fact we TRY to cook with them every week. Recently we made fried rice and ate with chops sticks and the children had a ball. It was a sneaky way of getting children to try things they say they don't like the taste of ... peas for instance!
ReplyDeleteI've included the link if you'd like to have a look!
Donna :) :)
http://www.playbasedlearning.com.au/2010/09/fried-rice-with-chop-sticks/