More Cooking with Preschoolers

Here is some more information from my friend about the outline for the co-op classes she teaches for cooking with preschoolers.

“As far as an outline, our co-op class times are an hour per class.

I would find a book sometimes using the Curriculium’s ( Let’s Cook A Book)  suggestion   ex. Pizza

We would read the book and then make the items.

We would use good kitchen rules:
1. Wash our hands before we handle food.
2. Don’t play with knives. We don’t cut our hair or pretend they are swords.

Then I would  let the kids cook. If it called for 2 cups of something and I had 8 students,  we would use the 1/4 cup so everybody got to add some.  We could work on math that way too by explaining that 4 of the 1/4 cup = 1 cup. We would count as each one added in their scoop 1,2,3,4= (1)  5,6,7,8 =(2)

Sometimes it got messy. When we made ziplock bags of ice cream it got cold, but it was fun and the kids loved it.  I would  type out a sheet with the recipe for the kids to take home each week so they could make it at home with mom and dad too.”

Here are some examples she gave. When they read these books, they made these recipes:

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs – Make spaghetti

Gregory, the Terrible Eater – Make dirt cake

Stone Soup – Make vegetable soup

What a great way to have fun with kids. When they are preschool age, they still want to do what we are doing. Once they get to be the age where they are more capable, it’s hard to get them in the kitchen sometimes. If you can capitalize on the time when they want to be in the kitchen, they will learn some valuable skills for life and might even enjoy cooking when they grow up. Plus you get to make some great memories.