Children & Cooking

Positive Results include:

• An opportunity to begin accepting responsibility for their own eating habits
• Providing a wonderful sense of achievement
• Trying foods they have previously rejected.

Preparing & cooking food involves all kinds of skills - both social & physical skills:

• Self responsibility
• Scrubbing, tearing, dipping
• Pouring, mixing, spreading, shaking
• Wiping, washing, peeling, cutting, rolling, mashing, grating

It also develops language and mathematical skills as they learn different words and measure ingredients.
ECEs that run cooking sessions with children regularly often write out the recipes so that the children can follow the method without reading.  Pictures are used for each step.

Safety

Steps that involve heating, cutting or grating, should be carefully supervised. Allow lots of time to prepare something and let the children do as much as they can themselves.

Hygiene

It is very important that the adults provide role-modelling for food preparation techniques and food hygiene practices. Ensure children wash their hands properly and dry their hands thoroughly before preparing food. Hand washing also needs to be repeated after visits to the toilet, licking fingers and nose blowing.