Based on my observations during my cooking classes, I realised that school aged children can benefit from learning life skills.
I heard that some cooking classes practice their cooking skills using water for learning measuring skills and sand for learning how to flip food in the fry pan.
However, children are highly motivated when they are using real ingredients for cooking class.
The benefits for school aged children participating in cooking class using real ingredients are:
- Improve their Emotional (EQ) and Social Intelligence (SQ)
Children willingly participate enthusiastically and happily in mixing the ingredients or stirring the dough and other cooking tasks that they do during the cooking class activities.
Children will learn best when they are happy.
That is why this is the best time for educators to teach children about how to be kind to others, how to work as a team and how to be responsible.
This intentional teaching is important to train children to be altruistic, to have empathy and compassion towards others.
Sometimes in the middle of the cooking process, there was a complaint from a child that he or she was not given an opportunity to stir the dough.
The educator can use it as an opportunity to remind all students about working as a team.
The big advantage of a group cooking project is that the children learn to work as a part of a team.
In today’s world, working as part of a team is highly valued.
Another example, a child might refuse to clean up after the cooking process ends.
Educators always need to create a habit by stepping in and then inform all of the children using a friendly reminder about cleaning up after working.
The best way is from the beginning of the cooking activity, the educator explains to all children that they are expected to clean their cooking utensils after finishing their cooking project.
Why is it important to encourage children to clean their cooking utensils? It is important to teach children to be responsible and clean up after themselves.
In this cooking activity situation, everyone is responsible to clean up after they made a mess.
Some children might not know how to clean up their mess because they were not given those opportunities at home.
Why is it important to teach children about responsibility, being kind to others and working as a team? It is important because we are giving children opportunities to be able to do life skills and later on they can use those skills to contribute to their families and communities.
I think that all educators have an essential task in preparing children to be adults who are able to:
- treat others in a humane manner
- be independent
- be physically and emotionally healthy
- be able to have empathy towards others
- create a better place to live in the world
- Improve their Logical Thinking Skills
It is a magical experience for them to witness and to be involved in the cooking process from the beginning until the end and to see the result then taste the output from their learning experience straight away.
Cooking is an activity that requires children to contribute their efforts in order to achieve the concrete result. Let’s say, the children were given a project to produce chocolate muffins. By the end of the cooking process each child will get at least a chocolate muffin. A chocolate muffin is a concrete result for each child to touch, taste and eat. These processes are helping their brains to understand to get a certain output, they need to provide a certain number of inputs.
Those inputs involved a lot of numeracy and literacy skills to produce the chocolate muffins that they then eat.
Numeracy and literacy skills are needed to get the recipe information regarding the quantities, types of ingredients, procedures, oven temperature and times.
The education research shows that if a child is happy while doing a task, knowledge retention levels will be higher.
Based on my observation after providing cooking activities at many schools for school aged students, they were overjoyed when they got the result, in this case was the chocolate muffin.
They also spelled the cooking procedures to their parents when they were picked up.
Sometimes some children did not want to go home without their chocolate muffins in their hands. I had to place the uncooked chocolate muffins in plastic containers so that they could bake the uncooked chocolate muffins at home in order to persuade them to go home. Some parents willingly waited with their children until they got the chocolate muffins in their hands.
My conclusion is educators need to provide cooking activities based on children’s favourite
- Improve their Fine Motor Skills
- Improve their Self Confidence
They will take the ownership of their cooking process and the output anyway. When they have the output in their hands and are able to eat it, they know that they are capable of cooking something for themselves.
Children are motivated to eat their cooking output, regardless of whether the taste is delicious or not.
If children cook it it and own the process it is like gold to them.
This same feeling is what motivates the self actualization movement.
You also see it when children do outdoor adventure activities when they own the process.
The key is that all educators always support each child’s choices when exploring and experimenting with the recipe during the cooking process.
- Prevent Boredom and Improve their Ability to Entertain themselves
Ideally, each child should be able to work individually on their cooking project.
This concentration helped them to entertain themselves during the cooking process. Even children with behaviour problems were able to concentrate on their own project during the cooking process.
Please note that every child is given their own ingredients to complete their own project during the cooking process.
©Tina Adi
