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Educational Value of Play - Cooking
Cooking
Cooking with your children is fun and can be a valuable educational exercise as it teaches a number of important principles.
- Physical Development
- Language / Social Development
- Developing Mathematical Concepts
- Developing Scientific Concepts
Physical Development
Mixing, stirring, tipping, shaking are all part of cooking and all develop children's fine and gross motor skills. Lifting bowls to tip a cake mixture into the cake tin, or pushing the wooden spoon through the thick biscuit mixture is like a 'mini workout' for little muscles!
Measuring ingredient quantities and tipping them into small containers is excellent for developing hand-eye coordination.
Language/Social Development
Cooking 
is an excellent activity for stimulating children's social growth. Cooking at home with mum and dad, builds life scripts for appropriate behaviour and strengthens bonds. Children can work with friends, learning to share and take turns and of course the yummy result at the end is a real confidence booster and another opportunity to share.
Children learn the language associated with colour, texture, smell and taste. They learn to name cooking equipment and use the mathematical language associated with measurement, especially weight and volume.
Developing Mathematical Concepts
Measurement is fundamental to cooking . Children learn to measure solids using spoons, cups and scales, and to measure the volume of liquids using cups or measuring jugs.
Something as simple as making a sandwich is rich in opportunities to develop mathematical concepts. Children can look at the shape of a slice of bread and determine whether it is thick or thin. They develop spatial concepts - How much margerine do they need to cover the slice of bread? How many slices of tomato are needed to cover the bread? Which cheese will best fit on the sandwich - small chunks or one slice? They learn about fractions as they cut their sandwich - halves and quarters. They see that 2 halves make up the whole slice, 2 quarters make up half of a slice and 4 quarters make up a whole slice. This is early concept development of whole-part relationships.
Whilst making cookies, children can guess how many small cookies will come out of the one bowl of mixture. They can see how substances can change shape as they flatten their ball shape into a cookie. They can guess how many cookies will fit on the baking tray. They develop their spatial awareness as they see how many smarties are needed to cover the surface or when they are baked they may cover the surface with icing. Children can decide which is the most appropriate container to put their cookies in (spatial awareness), and what is the best way to pack them into the container. When they have friends over, they can share out a quantity of their cookies - developing early division concepts.
Muffin pans, pattycake pans, ice cube trays and dare I say it - chocolate bars, are a wonderful way of introducing multiplication.
This cake pan shows that 3 rows of 3 make 9. (3x3=9)
This ice cube tray shows that 8 rows of 2 make 16. (8x2=16) or that 2 rows of 8 make 16. (2x8=16)
This bar of chocolate shows that 10 rows of 6 make 60 (10x6=60) or that 6 rows of 10 make 60 (6x10=60)
Developing Scientific Concepts
Cooking shows how heat changes a substance from one form to another - science. Children see that they mix ingredients in a bowl, and a new substance is formed. When making a cake, they pour their liquid mixture into a cake pan, heat it in the oven, and a solid cake with a very different size, texture and perhaps colour appears. Adding heat to corn kernals causes an amazing change! Heating water turns it into a gas and freezing it turns it into a solid. If they add white custard powder to a moist mixture it turns yellow and they can have so much fun with food colourings. Heating bread makes it brown and hard - toast.
And don't forget - the best part of all - you can teach them how to do the dishes after they have finished!!!!!
Be sure to check out itz4kidz range of cooking packs. Each pack comes with 6 different recipe cards (excluding the pancake set), an apron and some recipe appropriate equipment. With 5 different cooking packs to choose from there is sure to be one that your child will love. View details for more information.
