DIY Homeschool Cooking Curriculum
Here’s how we created a fun, educational homeschool cooking “curriculum”. Both of my kids LOVE cooking and it’s a great life-skill to get comfortable with from an early age! It’s honestly something kiddos are instinctively drawn to, but because it can be a big mess or sound too stressful to adults, it can be intimidating. When my oldest was in kinder, they were in a project based learning collective 2 days a week- so my youngest and I used that time to cook together. Without fail when I’d ask what she wanted to do it was “play cooking show”. I wanted to figure out a way to weave this more consistently into our curriculum so that’s exactly what we’ve done this school year (2021-22) and we’re LOVING it so far! I’ve edited this post (Feb 2022) to include my tips for the 5 and under kiddos too! Scroll down past the elementary-age kiddo bit to find tips for having some cooking fun with your Preschool/TK’er too!
This is really simple and you can modify this any way you need to. If your kiddos are pre-readers or in the 5 and under set- I’ve got you covered too, scroll down for some tips on cooking with the little-littles!
After reading reviews, we chose to cook our way through The Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs by America’s Test Kitchen. They also have a baking book which we’ll be moving on to next.
Every Thursday we make a new recipe! It double rocks because that means every Thursday they make either lunch or a snack or dinner and they clean up!! Win WIN!
Here are my tips for getting started and keeping up with a “do it yourself curriculum” like this one:
Make it a regularly scheduled learning component- at the time I initially wrote this we would cook every Thursday afternoon and adapted that to every-other Thursday afternoon to fit in another class. I’ve found, if you want to stick with something actually scheduling it like a “class” helps tremendously! Sometimes we do “ongoing” like this book, where we cook every Thursday till we finish the book! Other times we break it into sessions- 12 weeks of biology on Wednesday mornings then a 2 week break, etc. I know this doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s been brilliant for us! Dedicate time to cook regularly so they can really develop the skills! The point is, having it scheduled helps make sure it happens!
Get a book that you like, that works for your kid’s level (talk to the kids about it, we chose this because we wanted an overview before getting into more specific stuff, we plan to do the baking book version next!) My kids are 6 and 9 and we have found this one to work VERY well for all of us, we also have a 10 year old in our co-op group who loves it and our friend with 11 & 13 year old have used it too! If you get a book and don’t like it, find try a new one, or you can go even more DIY with it and just pull a recipe up from the web each week that fits the theme of other learning you have going on! Having a book also adds structure and importance to the activity and normalizes using a guide when doing something new.
PREP a bit before hand- I have the kids help me clean the kitchen then they play outside while I get a few things set up- this especially helps if you’re tight on space. I get out the majority of the ingredients and tools but almost always intentionally forget a thing or two so they can do inventory before we begin. You can also have them use the book to locate everything- we do that too, but when I’m cooking with 4 kids I usually pass on the scavenger hunt in my kitchen and save the energy for the cooking!
Start by reading (or having your kiddo read aloud) the ingredients and their quantities and the tools needed to complete the recipe, scope the scene and make sure everything is accounted for BEFORE you start. Talk about how many servings there are, do you need to double anything? Divide anything in half? One of the reasons I love the book we use is because most recipes are a smaller portion, 2-4 servings per recipe- since we cook with 4 kids that makes it really easy, and it’s perfect when we want to double a recipe so the grownups can have some, because then we get to do some good multiplying/extended addition of fractions! YAY! I absolutely keep my wee whiteboard near by to draw things out when we need to!
Once you have all your ingredients, tools, and clean hands (another great reason to incorporate a cooking lesson each week- they get AWESOME at hand washing!), we follow the recipe step by step. While work our way through we discuss measurements, reactions, the origin of the recipe if applicable- there are LOADS of learning opportunities to discover as you go! Discuss the tools, the techniques, repeating the same key points each time (THIS is the liquid measuring cup, THIS is the dry measuring cup….teaspoon v tablespoon, etc).
Tips for cooking with Preschool/TK/K age kiddos:
When my kids were 5 and under we didn’t use a cookbook or get too technical about any of it.
Ask THEM what they want to make- I would have my youngest give me 2-3 of her “top picks” and find a recipe that looked as simple as possible by googling the item with “recipe for kids” or “easy recipe for” in the search. You can also do the reverse and find 3 recipes that work well for you then give them choices. Either way, for sure involve them in the selection process.
Some of our favorites from age 3-5 were: cold pasta salad, chocolate chip cookies, Oreo truffles, DIY pizza with pre-made crust, brownies, banana bread and blueberry muffins.
Clean the kitchen and set everything up first. This makes clean up so much easier and the prep makes the experience more fun and less stressful. I would set out loads of extra kitchen towels too for quick clean up as we went. I would also do most of the measuring and just show them “this is one cup of flour”, we worked our way up to them doing the measuring AND pouring, stirring etc. I did always let them crack the eggs and they’ve known the crucial, “crack your eggs in a separate bowl” rule since before they could read!
Be strategic with your workspace set up- when we first step up to assemble the recipe I never put EVERYTHING in their reach- my youngest would have easily snagged the entire stick of butter and eaten it in a half second if I did that. I lined things up in the order they would go in and handed each to them one at a time. They still licked stuff and tasted the plain cocoa powder plenty.
SLOWLY do less and let them do more as you go, week by week.
Use pretend play opportunities to re-establish the skills they learn (playdough time or play kitchen time is awesome for this).
Keep it fun, laugh and clean the spills together. Laugh and make faces when it doesn’t come out how you expected. Celebrate and enjoy the experience together as true magic-making and life skill strengthening and connection time.
Bonus- it’s a great way to reinforce good hand-washing habits too!
Cooking and learning in the kitchen has been such a fun, delicious part of our homeschool experience and I love watching the kids get more confident and creative with this life-skill. We want to see what YOU cook up!! Tag me in your adventures on IG @bethgriffin_co so we can see what you made!