Kids and Cooking

I followed Jamie Oliver's advice today. A five year old and a nine year old can learn how to cook in just 5 minutes. The results are immense.

My previous blog was about Jamie Oliver and what he tought about cooking and kids. It was a reminder.

Its Sunday today and my kids tell me they are bored and hungry. I told them to come into the kitchen and lets cook something.

Nine Year Old

I had some left over rice. I asked him if he wanted some some fried rice. 

I helped him chop up some onions, garlic and ginger.
And then some cabbage

Made him switch the stove and pour the oil and mix the ingridients in. He then put in the cooked rice and finished off with soya sauce.

That's it - 5 minutes  and less.


5 Year Old

He wanted some toasted bread. This time I asked him to do it himself with some help from me.

He placed 2 slices in the toaster. And buttered it himself. He does not like the sides and I let him use a butter knife to cut them.







And there were still hungry and asked for instant noodles. It was a good opportunity to teach my nine year old.

He cut out the noodles from the packets. And i said it would normall use one and half glasses of water for 1 packet and tested him on how much he would need since he is making 2 packets.

He placed three cups of water and he and his brother enjoyed a meal of instant noodles.

It was a good Sunday. It does not take long if the dish is simple. They learn lots

- self confidence

- take pride in their product

- they occupy themself

- they are learning a live skill

- they have fun

- they are with you building a family culture which they can take when they have kids

Parents, this is a short post to share my experience today and the joys and the importance of bring the kids into the kitchen. As NIKE says JUST DO IT!

Write in with your experience with your kids. And one more thing, dont nag them to clean up. There is plenty of time for that. Let them have fun and let them experiment.

Happy Cooking and Teaching!

Teaching Math to a 10 year old With Cooking – Secrets they don’t teach you at school

10 year olds are busy bees! How do you get them to practice math at home? To be effective, one great way is for kids to practice math through hands’ on activities which gets their interest. At times, there must be some injection of fun and not so serious an environment to get them to understand math.

Math basics are essential and you will be surprised how our homes are equipped to ensure that our kids acquire those math fundamentals.


1 FRACTIONs

10 year olds need to learn a lot about fractions. From basic fractions that are with common denominator they will go on to learn uncommon denominators and the use of fractions in various math operations.

It was not easy for me when my son was just learning fractions. Drawing diagrams and using color just did not get it home with him. I sliced potatoes at first to show him what fractions meant.

Potatoes helped greatly and I also turned it into an art project! But potatoes did not help much when denominators and numerators differed and operations become complicated.

Cooking however is a very good method to teach fractions. How?

For simple fraction practice, simply follow a recipe.

For more advanced fraction, get your child to double or halve the recipe. Another practice is asking your child to figure out which measuring cups to use. For example, only make available a 1/4 cup measuring cup when baking a cake. Help your child figure out how many 1/4 cups go into each 1/2 and full cup. And so on.

Check my blog entry on Love Cookies to help with a quick recipe for giving your kids a lesson on fractions.

2 DECIMALS

Decimals is the other thing that 10 year olds need to learn. Teach decimals from basic fractions.

Children will also work with decimals with money. If you give your child an allowance, you may want to give slightly different amounts. Vary the practice. Ask your child to add the decimals or subtract.

You can also show your child how to compute the tip at restaurant, which will practice decimals.

Cooking is again an excellent method. Change the recipe to decimals. Give your child the measuring cups and so on and he will need to translate the decimals to fractions.

You can use the same principle for other math basics.

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Happy Cooking!

Happy Pancakes

Do you get your kids asking for snacks or saying that they are hungry or there is just nothing to eat!

In situations like this, I look to the good old PANCAKE. There are other quick bites too but I thought I’d share with you my simple pancake recipe in this blog.

Pancakes are quick, easy and tasty snack.

Have a look at this recipe, it’s extremely easy to remember and easy to make. It makes about 5 to 6 pancakes.

Lets see how to get your kids involved and what they learn with such a simple recipe.

Shopping List and Parent’s Teaching Aid

1 cup self raising flour
(self raising flour is better than plain flour
because of its enhancing structure)

1. What is flour 2. What is flour’s texture 3. What is flour made of 4. Numbers – 1 cup

1 cup milk
(for kids, please use fresh milk or full cream.
Low fat milk is simply not encouraged for kids

1. Where does milk come from?2. Fresh milk vs ow fat milk because of the low fat content
3. What does milk have? 4. Why is milk good for you

1 egg

Let your kids break the egg. Show them the yolk

1. Where do eggs come from
2. Why do eggs have the yellow and the white
3. What happens if you boil eggs
4. Where do chicks come from

Notice that everything comes in 1.

For older children – this is a simple and great recipe to teach multiplication and division and using common sense

e.g.
1. How much flour, eggs and milk I need if I need to make 10 pancakes
2. What happens if I half the ingridients? (Teaching fractions)
3. What happens if I double or triple the ingridients? (fractions and multiplying)

A little sugar and salt
Not too much. Only enough to give a taste.

Blend everything together. Have your kids know what’s little or a lot

Place some oil in a pan and fry the pancakes a little at a time You can help your kids. Be careful of the fire. Teach kids about fire and how something that was raw gets cooked with fire.




Serve as is or with butter and honey or marmalade or fruit, or anything that the kids or adults like.



Mums and Dads,




I hope you and your kids have a wonderful time making the pancakes.

Please let me know how they turn out and whether your kids learnt a lot more that either of you thought!

Happy Cooking!