About a year ago now, my husband came up with the fantastic idea to get our kids to cook every Sunday night. My initial thoughts were "bloody fantastic idea" - and lets be honest, I was purely thinking of it from my own point of view "Yes!!! - one night a week when I don't have to cook!!!"
However, what has become known as "Kids Cook Sunday" has brought so many more benefits our household, that I hadn't even considered. Let me first tell you how it works:
Each week, the kids take it in turn. Whoever's turn it is has to plan a two-course meal. It can be either entree and main, or main and dessert, etc. Then they need to go through the pantry, fridge, freezer, pantry and garden to work out what ingredients we already have and what I need to buy - then make me a shopping list.
They need to do this early in the week, in fact each Sunday, while we are eating, Cam often says - "so, whose turn is it to cook next week". Then, "what do you think you might cook?" So they are already thinking, and have often decided by the end of dinner.
They have a $20 budget, for me to spend at the supermarket on their extra ingredients. This may not seem like a lot, but we grow a lot of vegetables, have a freezer full of meat - and a very well stocked pantry. Some weeks I don't have to buy anything.
Learning to Cook
Okay... obviously the kids learn to cook. This is soooo important - can't emphasise it enough! As we get older, there is so much about cooking that we take for granted. An example is mashing potatoes. My middle son made mash potatoes to go with a meal not so long ago, my instructions were peal the potatoes, put them in a saucepan of boiling water. When they are cooked mash them up with the potato masher. Well he literally did just that. As soon as they were cooked, he took the pot off the stove and started mashing - WITHOUT DRAINING THEM FIRST!! Second nature to me, but an easy mistake to make when you are 11! I'm so glad he has learnt that lesson now and not when he was cooking for his girlfriend in 10 years time!
We encourage the kids to try something different each time, or at least most of the time. They flick through the recipe books, or search online. They know how to read recipes, what the difference between 1 tbsp and 1 tsp is (another lesson learnt the hard way...). They know how to operate the oven, stove and other appliances.
Nutrition
We talk a lot about health and wellbeing in our household. Cam and I are often encouraging the kids to be exercising, thinking about their food choices and how their health is affected - both positively and negatively.
This is particularly the case when they are planning their meals. We encourage a balance. These pics show Danny's meal a few weeks ago: grilled chicken and salad rice paper rolls - super healthy! Followed by self-saucing chocolate pudding and ice cream... not so healthy! Both were amazingly delicious, and its great for them so see that healthy food can taste great too!
Planning and Budgeting
As I mentioned above, the kids are responsible for planning their Sunday night meals from start to finish. They have to start thinking about it early in the week, so that they have time to do their shopping list, and for me to buy the ingredients they need. On the odd occasion when its been left to the last minute, they get to experience that feeling of pressure and stress, and the consequences of not planning properly.
By giving them a limited amount of money to spend on their ingredients they learn to think about money, and the value of different things. They also learn about making do - about seeing what we already have and working out how to incorporate existing ingredients so their budget can work.
"School" Lessons
This one is probably more relevant with the younger kids - working on their reading and maths skills. Cooking teaches the kids to think about volume - eg, 1 cup, 1 litre, etc. It teaches them about weight - 250 grams, 1kg, etc. Often they have to think about metric and imperial conversions - and temperature - both with the oven and with the stove, for example what temperature does water boil, compared to melting butter, etc. They also learn about measurement and the consequences of not measuring correctly!
And reading - reading recipes is great reading practice, often they are expanding their vocabulary at the same time; learning new words that they may not come across in other areas of their lives.
General lessons
Other benefits of teaching kids to cook include things like building their self esteem, teaching them to be more creative (as they get older - not advised with an unsupervised 7 year old!), and time management!
It can also be a great opportunity to talk about other cultures - how cuisines vary from country to country, and also how some regions of the world struggle with not being able to get the nutrition they need to sustain themselves.
We've had a lot of conversations about where our food comes from- how it is produced, how far it has travelled to get onto our plates.
Mostly it has been very rewarding watching our kids learning to cook. We definitely get a bit of wingeing and resistance occasionally, but I'm sure on the whole its a positive thing for our family!
No responses yet