Surviving Cooking with Kids

For the first several lessons, I make sure to go over the Rules. For example, you might say to use quiet voices, work neatly, help clean up, and raise hands. Kids love cooking and get very excited. Set your mind set that they will be very exuberant and try to curb their enthusiasm as much as possible without stifling their creativity or losing that energy. Try to answer questions by having them figure it out on their own. It can also help to ask interactive questions that require a thumbs up or thumbs down gesture.

The best advice I picked up from a teacher was to have a clear table when you start a lesson. If you have things on the table, kids want to touch them and it takes twice as long to get their attention. If possible, try to go over the objective and the main points of the lesson with as little in front of them as you can. Pass out items only when you are ready.

Also, be flexible and have backup plans. Imagine discovering that you have a group of kids sitting in front of you and your electric griddle using a 50’ extension cord isn’t getting hot. Luckily, I had a camp stove, griddle and small fire extinguisher stowed in my car. For me, that also meant I had a bag packed with goodies that I might need on a regular basis and a school kitchen stocked with extra supplies. The basics in my bag include plastic silverware, garbage bags, surface wipes, PAM, napkins, pot holders, and possibly a can opener and a small bag of golf pencils to provide when filling out worksheets. Make sure you have access to a set of plates, bowls and cups.

These stations are designed to run approximately 1/2 hr. When these lessons were conceived, I had 3 groups of 8 kids each. For survival, prepare as much as possible at home. If your school has a kitchen, remember to reserve it. On the other hand, this particular year I did all the lessons outside on a picnic table because my cooking session overlapped with the younger grade teacher’s lunch hour. If I needed to use an oven, I brought everything home to cook and took it back to school later.

A note about dishes. I like the Preserve brand reusable plastic plates but disposable plates would work, too. Our school has a set of heavy duty plastic ones that I can take home and wash when I don’t have mine. For clean up, I trained the kids to throw all the plates, silverware, etc. into a garbage bag and hauled it home to run the dishes in my dishwasher. The plates are crucial for serving food but also act as a work surface for cutting and illustrating lessons. For some lessons, I covered the surface of the table with a table cloth but that can be time consuming to clean. I’ve also used long sheets of butcher paper and that worked well but I don’t know how expensive that would run to use a new sheet on an 8 foot table for each group.

A list of children’s food allergies or dietary restrictions is crucial. Before you serve any foods, check in with the parents to make sure that you know what you can and cannot serve. I have found parents to be inordinately helpful at providing acceptable alternative foods. Parents want their kids to participate so even if a child cannot eat what you have prepared, have them wash their hands and then eat a piece of fruit or something else with the group.

Make a list of what you want to do and be sure to emphasize what the lesson is about. You want the kids to be able to walk out of the lesson saying we learned about parts of a whole instead of we ate potatoes.

Introduce the idea of proper measuring cups (dry vs liquid). Also, use the mnemonic of a teaspoon sits on a table(spoon) so kids understand their relative sizes to one another. Everyone can remember the first time they made cookies that had too much salt. You can use a picture like gallon man to illustrate the relative sizes of gallons, pints, cups, etc.