Cooking with kids (5-7)
As children get a little older, they get so much from cooking.
What skills will children learn
From reading the recipe and following the instructions to weighing and measuring ingredients. Cutting, cracking, beating, mixing, kneading, rolling, chopping and shaping. Children can manage so much more as their fine motor skills are further developed at this age.
As well as the physical skills that are honed, cooking is very empowering. Children want to know that they can do things, it boosts their self-esteem, which is a magnificent thing. By cooking they are learning valuable life skills.
Food hygiene basics and age appropriate tasks will be learned. Every child is individual, and learns at their own pace, however there is no reason to think that most children of this age couldn’t crack and beat eggs (and remember to wash their hands once the egg is cracked), make pastry and start to help towards making dinner by peeling and chopping vegetables
National Curriculum
Cooking and nutrition falls within the Design and Technology curriculum. The new curriculum aims to teach children how to cook, with an emphasis on savoury dishes, and how to apply the principles of healthy eating and good nutrition. It recognises that cooking is an important life skill that will help children to feed themselves and others healthy and affordable food, now and in the future, potentially halting – and even reversing – the growth of diet-related illnesses.
In Key Stage 1 (Years 1 and 2), children will be taught:
- To use the basic principles of a healthy and varied diet to prepare dishes (The Eatwell Plate)
- To understand where food comes from
All of this is covered during our face to face classes.