Cooking is a great way to Promote Development and Learning Cooking is not only a fun and engaging activity for children, but one that has been used for years as an important teaching and development tool for all ages.

Cooking has a Social-Emotional Development – Hands-on cooking activities help children develop pride and confidence in their skills and abilities. The act of following a recipe can encourage self-direction and independence, while also teaching children to follow directions and use thinking skills to problem solve.

Cooking has a Physical Development – Chopping, squeezing, spreading, and mixing are all cooking skills that help develop a child’s small muscle control and eye-hand coordination. It’s impossible to separate hands-on cooking activities from physical development for young children.

Cooking has Cognitive Development – Cooking inspires children’s curiosity, thinking, and problem solving, offering new opportunities to make predictions and observations. Additionally, cooking offers authentic opportunities for students to understand and apply their knowledge of measuring, one-to-one correspondence, numbers, and counting. As they follow a recipe, children organize ingredients, follow a sequence, and carry out multiple directions.

Cooking helps Language Development – With its own vocabulary, cooking is a great opportunity for language development. Take advantage of opportunities for children to match pictures to words and articulate questions inspired by their new experiences.

Cooking has Connections to Content Areas Mathematics, Number concepts, One-to-one correspondence, Simple addition, Patterning (layered salads, kabobs), Measurement, Data collection, organization, and representation (voting on who wants a particular recipe or ingredient), Simple fractions (half, whole, quarter) Arts, Drawing/painting fresh seasonal products, Pictorial recipes, Edible art Science, Life science (growing food in the garden), Physical science investigation (changing forms – liquids, solids, gases), Making predictions and observations Social Studies, Share family recipes, Discover the important role of farmers in communities Literacy, Vocabulary and language development, Children’s literature, Recipe cards, and Life Skills.