Cooking experiences are a great way to expand on a story in your preschool classroom!
As I have mentioned before, cooking is not one of my special gifts, but I do like to cook and I especially love to cook with my class. I still have plenty of cooking activities to share with you so here is a new set, along with children’s books, that we tried during this past school year.
The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear
To go along with the book,“The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear” by Don and Audrey Wood
Making Strawberry Banana Smoothies
To make the smoothies, I gave each child a few strawberries and half of a banana to cut up with a plastic knife…
But once the children started cutting up the fruit, I realized that I can’t possibly put their fruit in the blender because they had all handled their own bananas and strawberries and there really was no way to rinse off all the germs…
So, I told the children they could just eat up what they had cut up and I would slice up some fruit for our smoothies…
I haven’t ever made smoothies before so I just guessed at how much fruit, ice, and milk I should use in the blender. I added all the ingredients and the children got all excited and shouted loudly when we pushed the button to blend everything all up…
I wasn’t sure which button to push on the blender either. I am not quite sure what the difference between puree, chop, and the other settings are so I just picked one and hoped for the best. Once the blending was complete, we poured each child a small cup of smoothie to taste…
Most of the children didn’t drink their smoothie. I kind of figured it was because they had already eaten so many bananas and strawberries, but after I tasted the smoothie myself, I realized it was because the smoothie tasted like water with seeds in it. It actually looked great but had almost no flavor at all…
A Rainbow of My Own
To go with the book “A Rainbow of My Own” By Don Freeman
Making Rainbow Toast
The first time we made rainbow toast, I set out small paint brushes and the kids hated it. I was so surprised that they didn’t like painting their bread so I decided that it was because it took too long to really get any color on their bread with small paint brushes….
So the next time we tried it, I set out large paint brushes and they loved it!
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
To go with the book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” by Laura Numeroff
Making Oatmeal Cookies
I used the recipe on the back of the oatmeal container and the children did a great job adding all the different ingredients but when it came to mixing them all together, that was a little tough…
I had one child work and work on trying to get the butter mixed in smoothly with the eggs but in the end, I had to mix that part up…
And when we went to add the dry ingredients, the mixture was so dry and crumbly that I am quite certain we left something out of this recipe but I was too disorganized by that time to know for sure what it was…
So I gave up and just let the kids think they were making oatmeal cookies. The oatmeal cookie mixture never made it into the oven…
Planting a Rainbow
To go along with the book “Planting a Rainbow” by Lois Ehlert
Making Rainbow Pudding
I had the children split up into two separate groups and each group did a wonderful job mixing up the pudding…
Once the children had the pudding all mixed up, then we divided it into five bowls and added color to each bowl…
Then each child was given their own plastic cup to go down the line and spoon in each color of pudding to make their own cup of rainbow pudding…
The process went really well but our pudding cups did not look quite as beautiful as the ones I saw online…
Which tells me that either I did something wrong during the process, or that the rainbow pudding cups I saw online were definitely not intended to be made by preschoolers…
I know – it kind of looks like a rainbow threw up in the cup but hey – our rainbow pudding cups may have not looked like lovely layers of rainbow pudding but they tasted yummy anyway!
About our Cooking
- Keep in mind that we don’t cook like this every day!
- We cook up something special about once and sometimes twice a month.
- We always wash hands before, during, and after cooking and do our very, very best to only touch our own food.
- When we are not cooking, we eat simple snacks like crackers, cheese, apples, and other food items that really are not that interesting to blog about.
Leave a Comment
If you have a favorite cooking activity, please leave a comment below – I would love to read all about it!
Links to grow on…
For more cooking ideas you can see the ones I have saved here on my Pinterest Snack Board or here on Pinterest Cooking with Kids board too!
Read it and cook it (version one) from Teach Preschool
Check out the Snacks and Stories blog too!
Books on Amazon
And here are links to cookbooks on Amazon that I don’t own…
This post is linked to…..
