Child care experts agree that children appreciate a wider variety of food when they participate in the preparation of meals and given the growing problem of childhood obesity this should be a priority for early childhood educators.

Cooking also offers a wide variety of teaching opportunities and the chance for children to develop a great range of skills. Here are just a few of the reasons why you should consider including cooking as a regular part of your teaching program:

• Cooking encourages creativity: Allow children to make decisions, add extra features, and do as much of the work as possible. Praise youngsters for experimenting and making something different. For example, the Happy Face Salad activity below gives children the opportunity to be creative and unique.
• Cooking teaches how things change: Through various processes in the kitchen – heating, freezing, grinding, and beating – food is made ready to eat. Cooking can be a great extension of your science units. Through the simple mixing of ingredients or watching water boil or freeze, for example, children can experience different states of matter.
• Cooking builds self-confidence: Realising they can take part in and contribute to the adult world, provides great satisfaction for children and develops positive self-esteem.
• Cooking experiences develop children's small motor control: Using cooking tools, such as shredders, graters, grinders, and peelers and kitchen scales develops fine motor skills and teaches numeracy lessons such as weight and size.
• Cooking teaches about gender roles: Food preparation is available to all children without regard to sex. Teachers may need to dispel the notion that preparing food is only for girls as cooking activities are of great interest to boys.
• Cooking teaches about other cultures: Food preparation is universal to all people regardless of socio-economic level or culture. Invite parents or community volunteers to lead the children in creating a cool cooking snack from another country or culture.

Almost every aspect of learning can be incorporated in cooking activities from colors, textures, smelling, pre-science, developing vocabulary, visual awareness, and measurements. Children constantly learn literacy in cooking activities because they are picking up on new words for foods that they are being introduced to and are cooking with. They learn how to follow directions and you can even teach geography by introducing foods from different areas or discussing where certain ingredients come from.

Effective cooking activities don’t have to involve the stove, children will gain as much from making a salad, fruit based snack or sandwich as they will from an activity which requires heat. Check out the bottom of this article for some simple heat free recipes you could try.

To ensure children gain as much as they can from any cooking activity you undertake try and involve them in the whole process. Children will love poring through books to select the recipe, picking/choosing the ingredients, measuring, slicing and mixing the ingredients and combining everything in a big bowl. Maintaining a constant dialogue with the kids throughout the activity and asking them open ended questions to promote discussion will ensure they are engaged for the whole time they are doing the activity.

To maximise success:

Read through the whole recipe before starting

• Gather all the necessary utensils and ingredients
• Set out the utensils and make sure knives are set back on the bench with the blade facing away from the kids
• Weigh and measure your ingredients
• Wash fruit and vegetables before eating and cooking
• Follow the recipe step-by-step
• Fill a sink/basin with water so you can wash things as you use them
• Make sure you take a few moments to admire your finish product, talk about its aroma and how it looks and what the children think it will taste like before tucking in.

Safety and hygiene
Remember that cooking is also a great chance to teach kids about the importance of good hygiene when growing, preparing and cooking food. A few simple hygiene rules should be reinforced every time you cook with children, these include hand washing and drying, maintaining clean utensils and prep areas, having safe and hygienic food storage and refrigeration and following correct waste disposal procedures.

HEAT FREE RECIPES

Bugs on a Log
Scrub celery sticks with a vegetable brush. Cut into 2-3cm pieces. Fill the groove with cream cheese and place raisins on top for bugs. This is a great cooking activity to complete during a lesson on insects.

Shape Kabobs
Cut cheese into bite-size triangle shapes. Slice into a square, then into two triangles. Cut carrots in circles. For extra fun, count the circles and sort from largest to the smallest. Cut celery in rectangles. To strengthen math skills, measure the length. Cut cucumbers in circles.

Directions: Put the various foods into separate bowls. Then have each child create a colorful and nutritious kabob using toothpicks.

Happy Face Salad (ingredients per child)
1 pineapple ring
2 tablespoons cottage cheese
1/4 cup grated cheese
2 stuffed olives
8 raisins

Directions: Have each child assemble the pineapple ring on a plate. Then have them add a mound of cottage cheese in the center, grated cheese for hair, olives for eyes and raisins for a mouth. Encourage the children to create different types of faces – happy, sad, excited, etc.

References:

Cool Cooking for Kids, Carolyn Tomlin, www.earlychildhoodnews.com

Kids in the Kitchen - Cooking experiences with children, Sonja Tansey, Putting Children First magazine of the NCAC.