As you can see from the photos, we have been busy baking muffins and frying pancakes. What a great way to learn math, science, and social skills: taking turns, measuring, pouring, cooking, and eating!
Before the March Break, our class baked healthy banana muffins and yummy pancakes together from scratch. The active, hands-on nature of cooking and baking makes it fun for the children. Having a tangible, concrete, and delicious product to share at the end makes the effort and wait worthwhile.
When children prepare food, they’re learning math, reading, and science. Following a recipe involves counting, measurement, and fractions (two teaspoons, three tablespoons, twenty stirs, whole, half, etc.) When we double a recipe to make enough for our whole class, we practice addition and multiplication. Following a recipe also involves learning about familiar ingredients and identifying common words such as flour, sugar, oil, and baking powder. We discuss the purposes of the ingredients and how we can make easy substitutions to accommodate our classmates with dairy and egg allergies. Mixing the ingredients and watching their creations change states teaches our students basic principles of science. Muffins go from batter to baked. Pancakes become light and fluffy after their liquidy beginning.
By handling cooking tools such as measuring spoons, by lining a muffin tin with paper cups, and by pouring and filling, the children develop fine motor skills and strengthen their eye-hand coordination. Through working alongside adults and performing “grown-up” tasks, children gain confidence. Cooking allows our students to make decisions about their food, to experiment, and to learn what works and what doesn’t. Both our successes and our messes help us gain self-esteem. Perhaps most importantly, the children practice important social skills by preparing food. Working together and taking turns, waiting patiently for items to come out of the oven or off the griddle, sitting down and sharing food and conversation, and cleaning up and clearing the dishes and plates all provide important learning opportunities.
Cooking with kindergartners may seem like a daunting prospect. Indeed, handling food sanitarily, following a series of steps and directions with precision, being careful around hot muffin pans and sizzling griddles, and waiting patiently for results that are not immediate can be challenging; however, we believe the academic and social benefits far outweigh the hassle. You can see the learning for yourself by trusting your child with adult responsibilities and by involving him or her in baking, meal preparation, table setting, and clean-up in your own home.
When Mme McMillan was grocery shopping, she saw that pineapples were on sale for $1.99! This price was much lower than the $3.99 that she routinely pays for cored pineapple in a plastic container. Never one to turn down a bargain, she chose two and took them to the checkout. Since she usually buys pineapples already prepared, she (embarrassingly) didn’t know how to tell when the pineapples would be ripe enough to eat. She asked the cashier, who asked a second employee. After none of the grown-ups could come up with a clear answer, she knew exactly who to ask next: Our wonderful, brainy kindergartners!
Mme McMillan brought the pineapples to our class and asked the children, “How do I know when they’re ready to eat?” We passed them around, using our five senses to explore the fruit. Using our eyes, we examined the colour. Should the pineapples be yellowish? We smelled the pineapples, and wondered if they should have a sweet scent. We handled the pineapples and thought maybe they should feel a little bit squishy. What about the leaves? Should they have healthy-looking green leaves? One student thought she heard that a pineapple is ripe when you can easily pluck a leaf from the top.
After debating the ripeness of the pineapples, several other questions came to mind. Why are prepared pineapples so much more expensive? B.D. suggested that we have to think about the costs of the container and of the worker doing the slicing. K.T. and G.R. asked, “Why do the pineapples have spikes on them?” The rest of the class brainstormed some responses. Mme McMillan read that the labels on the pineapples said they were “Fresh from the Tropics.” What does that mean? K.T. thought that meant that the pineapples were from somewhere like Mexico. Others agreed that pineapples grow in places warmer than Guelph. None of us have seen pineapples growing around here. Do pineapples grow in the ground? Do they grow from trees? C.B. wondered how fast they grow.
Mme McMillan brought an initial question for the children that grew into a wonderful discussion. Recently, both teachers have tried to be very intentional about modeling the posing of, and responding to, higher level questions. The children’s curiosity drives our program. We have often asked ourselves and discussed together how we can help the students ask questions that require more than a “yes/no” or similarly simplistic response. How can we elicit the sharing of the insightful ideas that we know are bubbling in their amazing brains? Our pineapple discussion is an example of how the learning of all, adults and children alike, can be extended through authentic questioning, hands-on exploration, and rich dialogue.
In the days that followed, we cut up the pineapples. With supervision, the children were very much involved in using paring knives carefully and responsibly to chop off the leaves, cut away the prickles, remove the hard core, and slice the sweet fruit. Of course, we had to have a taste test! Coming back to our first question, we agreed that the pineapples were, indeed, ripe enough to enjoy and very delicious.
Our One Hundred Days of School celebration was also so exciting for the children. Our class did a great job dressing up for the part too!
We hope that you have a great March Break and that the children will have a lot of outdoor time, now that it is warming up outside!
Bonne semaine !