ISM Spotlight – Cooking with Kids

This year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.

Over the course of this school year, the teachers at ISM have used cooking in a variety of ways to work on math, vocabulary and science. 

First through fourth grade made cookies to learn about rocks.

     

Third and Fourth grade baked muffins to work on doubling and halving recipes.

 

The whole school made orange marmalade after reading the book Bottled Sunshine.

 

 

 

 

Pre-K and Kindergarten made bread and pizza dough during their science unit on how materials change.

  

 

Cooking with kids works on measurement (both standard measurements like cups and teaspoons and ratio measurements as well – like needing more dry ingredients than wet ingredients), vocabulary (ingredient names, textures, verbs like grating, chopping and slicing.) and science (mixtures, chemical reactions, phases of matter etc.).  In addition, students work on real life skills including gathering and preparing materials and cleaning up. 

Some tips the ISM teachers discovered from all this cooking with our students are:

- Be sure to have all the materials you need ahead of time.  (Older students might benefit from creating a shopping list and even heading to the supermarket – great field trip!)

- Have a back up activity for those students whose attention is not maintained, coloring sheets and books to read are good for younger students.  Graphic organizers and additional prep are great for older students.

- Allow for additional time – cooking with kids takes longer than doing it yourself.

- Teach safety rules for dealing with knives, stoves etc.  Lay out the ground rules from the beginning.

- Let the kids get hands on – it’s not beneficial to the kids if they are just watching you, they need time to cut, stir, mix etc.

- Include fruit and vegetables – kids are much more likely to eat these things when they have helped cook them.

- Take time to eat!  Enjoying the fruits of your labors is the best part for you and the kids.