Preschool Cooking Ideas

Cooking with your preschoolers is an excellent way to incorporate all of your lessons on shapes, colors, counting, directions, math skills, etc and put them to practical use.

I have many preschool cooking ideas which you can use with your children. They always love eating their own special creations and you will find their attention span seems to increase when preparing a yummy snack!

1. It is essential that you talk about cleanliness and the need to wash your hands thoroughly before preparing food. You can use this as an opportunity to provide science lessons on nutrition, on health and being careful not to spread germs, and on how food changes shapes when heated, chilled or prepared.

Use their suggestions as to what to prepare. Ask them if their ideas are healthy snacks or not and why they think so! This is always a fun idea at circle time.

There are many kid friendly and environmentally friendly "kid safe" soaps to use now. You should have these around already in your classroom so you can use these to clean the table or kitchen area. Let them help and ask for their ideas on how to clean. When you ask their help and opinions you are encouraging them to think on their own and to provide reasons why they are suggesting ideas. This is a way to validate them and their ideas.

2. Keep the snacks or projects simple enough to do in one day. They do not have the patience or attention span to carry a food activity over to another day.

3. Break down the steps for them so that they feel in charge of creating their snack. The steps should be easy enough to do and still provide an element of choice and accomplishment.

Here are a couple of preschool cooking ideas that you can try:

Individual Pizzas

Crust--pocket bread, pita bread or half of a hamburg roll
Sauce--pizza sauce
cheese--slices or mozzarella or packages of shredded cheese
Options--pepperoni slices, sliced vegetables such as red peppers or mushrooms

Let each child have a pita bread or half of a hamburg roll. Give them each some sauce in a cup and let them spread it on the bread. Next have them sprinkle the cheese on the sauce. If you provide the options, they can choose what to put on their pizza.

Pizza provides so many opportunities to talk about shapes, cutting things in half and discovering a new shape. Use this as an preschool math lesson to count how many items are needed to prepare the snack and how much of an ingredient is used. They can learn new foods, new words, new shapes, etc.

Next step--Each child brings their pizza to the teacher who then heats it in a toaster oven in the classroom or in a regular oven if it is available. Once they see that the cheese is melted and the snack is ready, they will love eating their very own creation!

Cookie and Cake Decorating

Start out by washing our hands and discussing the reasons for cleanliness before food preparations.

I will bake the cookies and cupcakes the night before and then let the kids do the rest. I bring in their tables and chairs to the kitchen for easy access. You can always purchase large plain sugar cookies at the store and use these as well.

The most popular preschool activity is frosting cookies or cupcakes and using fun sprinkles, i.e.: zoo animals and farm animals delight them.

Provide them with skills, confidence in their abilities and choices and teach them sound eating habits at an early age.

Try these ideas when you want preschool cooking ideas. These are just two of hundreds of ideas to try with your preschoolers.