Kitchen Activities for Kids Every home has 1 room that provides the perfect teaching environment for children. In this room, you can teach children as young as age 1 every major subject found in the traditional school curriculum, including: Language arts Physical education Social studies Math Art Nutrition Science  This room is the kitchen. Sometimes it is hard to schedule learning activities for our children. However, preparing food and eating, something we all do each day, provide the perfect settings for teaching. Learning about the senses Food involves every sense. You can taste, hear, see, smell, and touch it. If prompted, children can easily talk for 10 minutes about a piece of fruit, such as kiwi. Luckily, prompting does not take much energy on a parent’s part. You can ask children questions while preparing dinner. Try these ideas: Blindfold your child and have him/her guess what a food item is by using all of his/her senses Make a game out of grocery shopping, having your child recite all of the foods that he/she sees that start with the same letter Help your child compare foods, such as by naming the similarities and differences between an apple and a pear    Learning about art Food is art. Gingerbread men, radish flowers, Jell-o® molds, and decorated cakes are art. Of course, you can use food itself as the medium for making art. Consider these activities: Mix together 18 ounces (oz) of peanut butter, 6 tablespoons (Tbsp) of honey, and nonfat dry milk until a claylike consistency is formed to make an edible play dough that children can play with and eat. Make faces from fruits and vegetables. Apple slices can turn into ears, raisins become eyes, and shredded carrots resemble hair. Have your child create a collage by cutting appealing food photos out of old magazines. Ask you child to draw a picture of his/her favorite food items. Artists have traditionally used food as the subject for many masterpieces.  Learning about math If you ask chefs what their most important tool in the kitchen is, many will not say a spoon or a sauté pan. The majority of chefs will tell you it is a calculator. No food would exists without math. Here are some examples: When making bread, we need to remember how many cups of flour we have already added to the dough and subtract this from the total amount that we need, in order to come up with how many more cups we need to add to the bowl. Have your child help keep track of how many cups you have added. If each person gets 2 slices of bread and 5 people are eating, how many total slices are needed? Even children who are too young to figure these problems out on their own can learn from listening to you explain how you would figure out the answer.  Learning about social studies Social studies is an easy enough subject to teach in today’s culinary world. Pasta is traditionally an Italian food, scones are British, and potato pancakes are German. Most of what we eat is at least loosely based on another culture’s food staples, and every meal is therefore a perfect time to learn about other societies. Within America, different foods come from various regions. For example, oranges are from Florida and California, cheese from Wisconsin, and lobster from Maine. Children memorize these facts in elementary school. It is definitely more interesting to learn about it at mealtime, rather than staring at a map in preparation for a test.  Learning fine motor skills Stabbing fruit with a toothpick or picking up small pieces of food builds fine motor development skills. Food preparation is based on the use of sensorimotor skills. Stirring, beating, rolling, peeling, spreading, and kneading are examples of skills requiring dexterity and hand-eye coordination. Serving food and cleaning up after a meal also necessitate motor skills.  Learning about nutrition Children can begin to learn about nutrition at a young age. The obvious starting point is the major food groups: Have your child describe what food groups are represented in the dish that you are preparing.  A chicken stir-fry, for instance, involves grains, meat, and vegetables.  Ask what food groups are missing in the stir-fry (milk and fruit) and how you could add those missing food groups to the meal. Make sure you discuss the “others” category. Apple pie and banana splits do contain fruit, but they still fall into the others group. Explain that all foods are OK to eat, but that we don’t need to eat very many foods from the others group, because these items are not as healthy for us.  Learning about food science The science of food is fascinating to a child. The following are some suggested food science activities: Compare a raw carrot, a cooked carrot, and an overcooked carrot. Ask your child what is different between the 3 varieties and which item he/she likes like the most.  Have your child compare dry and fresh pineapple. Explain what dehydration is. Teach you child that sugar browns, butter melts, and cornstarch thickens. All these facts are lessons.  Grow food and herbs, if your living situation allows for it. This is another excellent learning experience for a child.  The kitchen as a classroom Turning the kitchen into a classroom is good for building your child’s knowledge and skill base, as well as self-esteem. A child is proud to help with meal preparation. Make talking about food and preparing it a creative process. None of this will matter to your child. All your child will know is that he/she is having fun. The rest is your little secret.    Review Date 6/08 K-0594