What is cooking and why it important?
- Cooking is a practice or skill of preparing food by combining, mixing and heating
ingredients.
- Cooking is also preparing food in a particular way such as: boiling, frying, grilling, steaming,
roasting or cool cooking.
- Cooking is the art, technology and craft of preparing food for consumption with the use of heat.
- Cooking is science! When you cook, you are using; math, chemistry, biology.
In cooking also involves, Language, literacy, social emotional, physical and cognitive.
Why is cooking important?
1. It makes connection with children across many disciplines:
When cooking, you are teaching science, math, reading and time telling skills,
encourages healthy food choices, building confidence and creativity, enhancing
communication and deepening connections with your students.
2. Cooking is a Science:
Seeing the chemical reaction when cooking is a great time to ask questions and test
out results. E.g. when salt is added to food, when baking powder is added to bread
dough or when brown sugar is boiled to syrup.
3. It is Math:
Measuring and adding recipes as you cook involves math. The exposure as the
children cook helps to builds a basic math foundation.
4. Understanding of time: Cooking with children helps them to understand the concept
of time. Setting a timer when you start cooking and when the food is ready, gives the
children an idea of duration certain foods are cooked.
5. Literacy: Reading recipes aloud is an opportunity for children to enrich their
vocabulary through listening to new words. Watching teachers read from left to right,
top to bottom, helps the children understand basic literacy and reading foundation.
6. Healthy food choices: Children look up to adults or their teachers as models to see
what a good food is. Often children are more likely to eat food they have prepared.
Modeling healthy food choices in cooking and preparing meals will help the children
build a healthy attitude towards eating.
7. Confidence: cooking with preschooler sets them up for success. Creating something
from scratch that they are able to eat and enjoy builds their confidence to try new
things.
8. Creativity:
Cooking is an art and it is a science. The process of tasting and adding new
ingredients or spices is an exciting, creative and important feeling that children are
excited to undertake.
9. Communication: When cooking together, communication takes place, by reading
aloud the recipe, instructing the children steps and directions to follow. The children
learn to communicate instructions based on your modeling as you learn new ways to
explain things for them to understand.
10. Connections:
Working together, reading recipes, measuring, mixing, pouring, are opportunities to
connect with the children. Beyond connection with one another, cooking can connect
across concepts bundling disciplines together.
E.g: Did the dish burn? - Understanding time
Did the bread rise? - Science
How many cups were added? - Math
Was the recipe reads well? - Literacy
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