The Ultimate Homeschool Cooking Curriculum
At a time when more and more parents are researching their options for homeschooling, the choices can be overwhelming. Do I hire tutors? How do I create a curriculum? How do I keep my kids engaged? How do we maintain social contact with other children? What about unschooling? Can I incorporate something they love into what/how they learn?
Green Apron Kitchen has been the leading culinary education center for kids in the NYC area for over a decade. When the COVID shutdown happened, we pivoted all our in person cooking classes for kids to online cooking classes and it was an instant hit. Since then, we have developed an online cooking course that focuses on engagement, instruction, education and skill building.
Our homeschool culinary classes offer personalized instruction tailored to each child’s strengths so we can meet them where they are and ultimately will lead to self-sufficiency and confidence. The truth is that children look forward to taking part in mastering new things that really interest them, so why not incorporate math, ELA, STEM and cultural studies into a culinary homeschool program.
If you are going at the homeschool journey alone, parents will be looking for ways for the learners to explore and create with minimal parental involvement. You want to be available for your kids, but you want to set up assignments that encourage them to be capable and functional on their own.
Making homeschool fun, so that your children will be excited to learn will be one of your top concerns. If you have children of multiple age ranges, you will need to create homeschool projects that the whole family can learn from and join in. It can be challenging to find one activity that both a five year old, and a fifteen year old can benefit from. That’s where a Homeschool Cooking Curriculum comes in handy. An online or in person cooking class can engage kids in the kitchen, teaching them grown-up skills while instilling joy and excitement.
Why Parents Incorporate Cooking Skills Into Their Homeschool Curriculum and Kids Cooking Classes
Many parents turn to cooking when trying to come up with engaging and fun homeschool activities. Everybody loves to eat, and what better way to learn than by creating something you love? Chances are your kids have never really thought of how much knowledge they are acquiring when doing simple food preparation.
A basic homeschool lesson plan will include science, math, and language comprehension activities. Cooking and baking can provide lessons in these as well as a smattering of geography and a look at other cultures. At every age level, there can be participation in culinary activities that open up a new world. Toddlers can wonder in amazement as oil will not mix with water, and have fun as they transfer fluids from one container to another. Elementary students can practice their reading and execution skills as they follow the recipe steps they are reading. Middle schoolers can research how flour is made and how it is processed in the digestive system. Incorporating basic skills and cooking skills into these activities can further enhance their learning experience.
Cooking and baking allow a child to experience creativity in a new way, while feeling a sense of growing confidence. A child who has followed the steps of a recipe and created a new dish will be proud and have a feeling of empowerment. Structured cooking lessons can help kids learn at their own pace, practice diverse recipes, and gain confidence in the kitchen.
In a fast-paced world where unhealthy choices are everywhere it has become important to provide our children with the tools to make safe choices in a thoughtful manner. How can we raise our youth to make healthy food choices on their own? Through experimenting with different types of foods, a homeschool nutrition curriculum can be a great way to introduce these concepts. No foods are inherently good or bad; all food can be used to provide our bodies with fuel. Discussions about food safety will naturally occur during these lessons, emphasizing its importance.
Teaching our kids that there is room for all types of food in our diets is invaluable. Nutrition can include the science of digestion, and the chemistry of vitamins, as well as how certain foods affect one’s moods. It is never too early to teach children to notice, and be in touch with their bodies, and hunger cues.
Developing a Homeschool Cooking Curriculum
Some parents may opt to take a less formal approach to educating their kids at home through unschooling. Cooking and feeding the family are daily occurrences – it only makes sense to have food preparation be an integral part of the unschooling homeschool curriculum. Having children contribute to the preparation of their meals is possible at any age. A four-year-old can learn knife safety with adult supervision. Toddlers can learn how to wash dishes and set the table. Older children can decide what they want to eat and prepare grocery lists. Your level of involvement will depend on how much you want to expand a given lesson. With access to all the lessons in a comprehensive cooking course, children can learn at their own pace and develop valuable cooking skills.
If your twelve-year-old wants to make a cake for her birthday, she will use math to measure the ingredients, logic to determine if she needs to double the recipe for her guests, and reading comprehension to find and follow the recipe. Your toddler can join and help with the baking process which teaches them the idea of sequential steps and the art of patience while waiting for the cake to be finished. Utilizing various cooking resources can make this process more engaging and educational.
Unschooling is all about losing the curriculum, and letting your child explore the world without official lessons. Maybe after New Year’s your children will want to know about different food traditions associated with this holiday. They can research this and plan for holiday themed meals. They may learn about why many cultures eat black eyed peas. They may want to start sprouting peas. They may decide to start growing other vegetation. With unschooling, learning opportunities are everywhere, and the limits are set by one’s imagination. Starting with a dedicated knife skills class can be a foundational step before progressing to more complex cooking tasks.
Practicing food safety is also crucial during food preparation, ensuring that children learn to handle food properly and safely.
Whether you plan to unschool, or homeschool, or try a mix of both, Green Apron Kitchen can help !
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