Fun Lessons in the Kitchen Can Engage Children
Sep 04, 2023
The kitchen seems to be the one room in the house where everyone wants to gather. When it comes to homeschooling, there is always the option to teach many of your science and math lessons directly from the kitchen. What better way to teach science and math than to use hands-on and interactive, yet fun, lesson plans using edible teaching aides?
Cooking activities can be altered to the age and ability of children. Before you begin, be sure to find appropriate ideas. Safety is always the first consideration when it comes to all cooking lessons. You may want to go over safety rules before allowing the child to access anything in the kitchen. If you struggle with kitchen safety, then go online and search for training videos that you and your children can watch together. Next, gather your safety and hygiene items such as:
- Safety knives
- Aprons
- Gloves
- Hot pads
- Measuring cups and spoons
- Food scale
Now that you have gone over some safety rules and have gathered the necessary tools, you are on your way to making the next science or math lesson interactive and fun. Children love being involved in cooking and when you combine their school lesson with food, you’re sure to help them comprehend their lesson.
Weights and Conversion
Have your students weigh the dry ingredients using a food scale. Be sure to watch as they do so, and offer your assistance if they need help, but don’t do it for them. Cake and pancake recipes are great for learning about weights and conversions.
Fractions
Math concepts such as fractions can really be difficult for students to comprehend. If your child is having difficulty with this concept consider making their lessons and homework based on real-life such as cooking. Your students can learn their fractions by creating salad dressings and sauces.
Shapes and Geometric
Purchase a variety of basic cookie cutters that include a square, circle, triangle, and other simple shapes that relate to the lesson. Allow the students to cut out the shapes and match them to a workbook page. To use in the kitchen, you may want to use cookie dough, pie crust, or pizza dough.
Cookie cutters aren’t just for cooking. You can allow your children to trace each cookie cutter and create their own pictures. Add a unique element by allowing the younger children to glue dried pasta or beans to the shape once they have it traced. Cookie cutters can often be purchased for cheap at thrift stores, dollar stores, or even at yard sales.
Timing and Time Management
To learn how to manage time and understand temperature consider assisting the student with cooking an entire meal, with sides, for the family. Try your hand at making a full course meal such as pot roast with roasted vegetables and rolls or holiday-themed meals.
The idea with time management and cooking is to have your older child incorporate their lessons from math and nutrition classes to create a meal that requires multiple steps. You could give prompts such as how many minutes are in two hours? If a serving size is ½ a cup per person and we have five people eating, how many cups of vegetables do you need to buy and cook?
Science in the Kitchen
There are simple edible science experiments that teach children more about science. Some of the ideas are:
- Ice Cream
- Friendship bread
- Popcorn popping
- Sugar crystals
There are also non-edible science experiments that require food products. Here are a few experiments that you may want to do.
- Find out why apples turn brown once they are cut.
- Discover how to inflate a balloon without blowing it up.
- Identify why volcanoes erupt using baking soda.
If cooking is not an option then consider making DNA out of candy pieces or even geodes. There are dozens of ideas online, try your search on Pinterest.com for more edible homeschooling lessons plans and ideas.
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