I love to eat! This coupled with it being one of the best motivators on the planet, I like to use food in my classroom a lot.
Cooking is great, but not every cooking project is feasible with Toddlers. Even if you could do it with one or two at home, once you have eight of them in the room many cooking projects go out the window. I've had some great success with using food as an activity and many failures. Usually it comes down to involvement. If the kids are involved your golden, if it is not interesting enough you've got a problem!
Here are the best and the worst in my experience so far:
Lasagna is pretty quick in the classroom and fairly simple. It is also great because all the ingredients are already cooked, so time in the oven is to melt everything more than to be food safe, you always can microwave a piece or two later. I usually go for making a thing lasagna, with two thinner layers. This makes it easier to keep children engaged and easier later to give out bite size pieces. Lasagna being a dish with basically the same ingredients as most pasta dishes the children have already had is great for several reasons. One they already have experience with the ingredients and are more likely to try it. Also this is a new and interesting way to use those ingredients, and finally they get to explore how these ingredients go together, instead of just being served the finished product. When I start the project I talk a lot about "building" the lasagna, and how we have cheese, pasta and tomato sauce just like in other pasta dishes. I've found that once I show them what layer we are on, they do most of the rest. They builders in my class really enjoy putting down the pasta noodles, while the more sensory inclined members love the spreading and pouring. And then you are left with lunch, and usually a new idea for all the parents!
Pomegranates are amazing, first they are a fruit that is different and interesting. They are also a fruit and usually on the sweeter side, so that helps. That they have so many seeds makes them into an engineering problem. And the seeds also provide practice for budding fine motor skills. I usually just cut one in fourths or eighths and give it to each child skin and all. I then pick out a few seeds with them and show them how yummy they can be. At this point they are usually so excited they just go at it. Each time they use all their skills together to get a seed out, they get the instant gratification of a sweet burst in their mouth. I've seen a child sit for a good thirty minutes picking out seeds. Though be carful, the juice does stain, and this is a messy project all around.
Play dough Cookies is what I have dubbed them, they are basically old sugar cookie dough, revitalized with food coloring added. My mother in law had some sugar cookie dough that sat in the fridge and became hard, I took it to school and to make it workable I added some extra milk and food coloring. It was still really firm dough, and with the bright colors looked like play dough!So I let each child pick what color and gave them a blob for them to play with. If they ate it, it was not a big deal, and if they just put it in their mouth, it would be in the oven long enough to kill any bacteria they might have left behind. They made all sorts of things, and they were all told that each child only got one cookie, no matter how many they ended up making. They were fine with this, and I truly think they had more fun making the cookies than eating them.
Finally Apple Turnovers are a great and simple project, but be warned you need to get the right dough and keep it at their level, other wise this project can go from really fun for everyone into a disaster for the teacher, and the children not liking it either. You need frozen pie crust, apples, a little bit of sugar and cinnamon. I tried it with philo dough once, and it didn't cook through. It also was a very odd textures to the point the children didn't want to eat it. With pie crust, you just cut it into small squares, in a separate bowl mix up cut pieces of apple, the sugar to taste and the cinnamon. Spoon a dollop of mixture in the middle of each square and pinch close. The filling is quick enough to maintain attention, and the pinching is a great use of budding fine motor skills. If they fall open in the oven, they are still amazing. That is why this project is idiot proof, it is really hard to mess up!
Now the worst food project I've ever done is California Rolls. The kids were not into it for several reasons, and I ended up losing their attention and making them all by myself. The rice being too sticky turned off some of the kids, then having to spread it didn't help. I put in the avocado in the middle and showed them how to roll it. At this point they decided it was too hard and found something else to do. They came out super yummy, but I was also the one who got to eat them. This is not something I would suggest doing with a group under six.
In all food is an amazing tool to learn with. The biggest lesson I've found is to keep it simple. Most children don't want to try something that they have never tried before, and the more complicated it is, the more resistant they will be. Giving them just one thing to play with as much as to eat gives them a chance to really experience a food and use all their skills on it. This way they can have fun and remember it, and then parents can give it to them at home to eat. I find they get out all the playing with a new food at school and then are much more willing to eat it at home. Keeping it simple also makes things calmer, there is less preparation, meaning less stress. Remember the goal is to have fun, learning will happen naturally in the process.
Thanks for reading!
Cooking is great, but not every cooking project is feasible with Toddlers. Even if you could do it with one or two at home, once you have eight of them in the room many cooking projects go out the window. I've had some great success with using food as an activity and many failures. Usually it comes down to involvement. If the kids are involved your golden, if it is not interesting enough you've got a problem!
Here are the best and the worst in my experience so far:
Lasagna is pretty quick in the classroom and fairly simple. It is also great because all the ingredients are already cooked, so time in the oven is to melt everything more than to be food safe, you always can microwave a piece or two later. I usually go for making a thing lasagna, with two thinner layers. This makes it easier to keep children engaged and easier later to give out bite size pieces. Lasagna being a dish with basically the same ingredients as most pasta dishes the children have already had is great for several reasons. One they already have experience with the ingredients and are more likely to try it. Also this is a new and interesting way to use those ingredients, and finally they get to explore how these ingredients go together, instead of just being served the finished product. When I start the project I talk a lot about "building" the lasagna, and how we have cheese, pasta and tomato sauce just like in other pasta dishes. I've found that once I show them what layer we are on, they do most of the rest. They builders in my class really enjoy putting down the pasta noodles, while the more sensory inclined members love the spreading and pouring. And then you are left with lunch, and usually a new idea for all the parents!
Now the worst food project I've ever done is California Rolls. The kids were not into it for several reasons, and I ended up losing their attention and making them all by myself. The rice being too sticky turned off some of the kids, then having to spread it didn't help. I put in the avocado in the middle and showed them how to roll it. At this point they decided it was too hard and found something else to do. They came out super yummy, but I was also the one who got to eat them. This is not something I would suggest doing with a group under six.
In all food is an amazing tool to learn with. The biggest lesson I've found is to keep it simple. Most children don't want to try something that they have never tried before, and the more complicated it is, the more resistant they will be. Giving them just one thing to play with as much as to eat gives them a chance to really experience a food and use all their skills on it. This way they can have fun and remember it, and then parents can give it to them at home to eat. I find they get out all the playing with a new food at school and then are much more willing to eat it at home. Keeping it simple also makes things calmer, there is less preparation, meaning less stress. Remember the goal is to have fun, learning will happen naturally in the process.
Thanks for reading!
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