I wanted to share with you something that I think is a fun thing to do with children. Cooking!!!! I personally do not like cooking much, but my husband does and my oldest daughter got that gene in her, since she was little she wanted to help out in the kitchen and cook. I think all kids do like to help in the kitchen when they are little. Estrella actually loves cooking, so much that one of her presents from my mom one Christmas was an apron and one of those things to hold hot pots, she was so happy with it. This past Christmas, my mother in law gave her a cooking book (My First Baking Book, by Helen Drew) and a whole set of real, kid friendly cooking utensils with a nice apron. The book is great because it has step by step, easy to follow directions. She thought it was the best present ever!
I didn't cook much with her then because I was working and all that. Now that I stay home I had to come up with several ideas to keep them entertain. So, besides all the play pretend we have going on in our house on a daily basis, we have things that we do every week. It all started with Estrella telling me that her classmates had this after school program that sounded like so much fun and that she wished she could go too. Well, we can't afford it at the moment. So I went into the website of the place where these kids take the course and find out that it was something about cultures, including food, music, art and traditional dresses from different countries. That was it, sounds so easy right? it takes two weeks to learn about a country, I guess is easier with a big group of kids.
What we do is that we learn about a country, we look it up in the globe, we learn about its music, and traditional dresses, its culture, language, etc. All very basic information that a 3 and a 5 year old can remember. I get books from the library and sometimes they have videos about families of that especific country. We then learn about its food and we tried to cook something from the country. For example, we learned about Guatemala and some of their traditional meals, we then learned to make tortillas and rellenitos (a plantain dessert) These past weeks we have been learning about Sweden, so today, we cook a treat from Sweden, Coconut Chocolate Balls.
The girls were bragging about them when daddy came home and told them that they had made a treat from Sweden.
Anyway, these are some things I do in our "cooking class" to make it more formal and to make sure the girls don't loose interest in the middle of the recipe. (which happens with the little one, I do short, easy recipes with her when the other one is at school)
1. I set some rules; few and easy things that they remember.
Before starting cooking wash your hands
roll on your sleeves
put on your apron
2. I try to have all the ingredients and utensils out and ready for when I call them for cooking class.
3. The utensils we use are kid friendly, like the knife my daughter is using in the picture, it is not a treat to her little fingers but it cuts the fruit ok for her to make her smoothie.
4. Most of the recipes we cook relate with the country we are studying that week, but we do lots of baking dishes from Estrella's book.
5. I got recipes that are kid friendly, for example, when I taught them about Guatemala, I was not going to teach them how to make tamales!!! I looked for something easy and that it wouldn't be messed up if little hands wanted to kind of play with the dough or whatever. My point, make recipes that you don't care how the outcome is, as long as you put the ingredients right, if the look is terrible but the flavor is yummy, then who cares!
6. We have fun, I don't get stressed with messes. It is kind of a play pretend, but we get real serious about following the recipe right.
7. I always say the ingredients to them and show them what measurements we need. They don't remember all of it, but, by now, Estrella knows what half a cup is and the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. I always say, "now we put 1/4 of sugar" and show them how the 1/4 is written on the cup, that way they have exposure to the real names of things and measurements, so when they see them in school they will have a little back ground.
8. Have fun, have fun have fun. My girls get so excited for cooking day, they really do, they love it, because they own it, it is their little creations!
I am sure some of you do this with your kids, so it you can leave a comment with more ideas for me I will appreciate it! I am not an expert in teaching how to cook, so your comments will be gladly welcome. What I am good at is art and that is what we do on Fridays, but that is for another post! thanks for reading.
