Cooking with children

Playing and cooking in the kitchen can be great fun. The kitchen is a central part of the house and that's where our dishes are for cooking and eating. The kitchen is rich in fun learning opportunities even from a very young age.
In the kitchen, the child learns:

Explore his world through his senses – contact (differentiation between different textures, weight, temperatures, etc.)
Taste and smell (sweet/salty/bitter/sour)
Hearing (noise of pots, mixing spoons, running water, etc.)
The sense of sight (the attractive colors of the food, the shape of the dishes and the dishes..) Vision is the main driver of participation – both for preparing the food and for eating itself.
Learning basic independence skills in the kitchen (scoop, pour and mix with a spoon, pour, open and close types of containers/bottles, apply, etc….
Learning basic safety rules in the kitchen – how to use knives, in the oven, be careful of hot food.
Interacting with food in a fun and creative way encourages the child to be more prepared and try and eat new things, thus even encouraging a better appetite.

Chen Shimoni, second year kindergarten teacher at the Be'er Sheva branch.

Mother to Raz and Lia, married to my father a permanent and pastry officer.

Shares with us ideas for recipes that can and should be done with the children now that we are all at home and saved from the coronavirus.

"Today, the field of cooking and baking is a new field of activity that integrates into various frameworks in the education system and my favorite field.

Therefore, I will try to bring some of this to you, to your home.

I will come up with a few simple recipes that you can prepare together with the children at home, enjoy the common process, and of course the product.

In the process of preparing the recipes we will be able to stimulate all our senses besides vision, we will be able to study the type of textures of the raw materials with the help of a tactile sense, taste, smell and even hearing.

Recipe for preparing rice and chocolate symme snacks:

Groceries

2 packs of milk/dark/white chocolate (200g total – of the same type you choose)

2 cups rice crackers (if not, you can use a white/black Fitzy cornflakes)

1 tablespoon chocolate paste ( if you used white chocolate – use a tablespoon of oil instead to keep the white color).

Large bowl

Measuring cup

spoon

Small pan with baking paper

Preparation process:

Put the rice west in a bowl. Micro-melt the chocolate with the spread ( every 30 seconds stop and stir. Pour over the nuts, stir.

Transfer to a pan, pallets and refrigerate for about an hour in the fridge. When the snack cools down, cut into pieces the size you want.

General emphasis on child sharing:

*You can let the children work on their ability to get around the house and ask them to take out the groceries and tools themselves and place them at a predetermined point.

*Put together all the ingredients in front of you, go through any commodity – smell, taste, root.

*Working according to a recipe reinforces the matter of "preparing in advance" and working after order of actions

*Children can be shown what happens to chocolate when dissolved, and feel accordingly (and even lick and taste the difference between textures – solid and liquid- spread). It is only important to emphasize to the children who feel the ingredients – when the raw material may be hot!

Do you have a ton of cookies drying out at home? Leftovers from all the packet deliveries? Wait, don't throw.
I will tell you that I do not have a morning that does not open with a cookie for every child (sorry of all the nutritionist and those who keep, ensure that they are naughty enough to burn it before going to kindergarten) – but now in the "coronavirus vacation" imposed on us there is a situation where there are all kinds of things open at home.. So instead of them being thrown out, we decided to make dirty chocolate balls out of them.
If you did not know, many times also in considered pastries, chocolate balls are made from "leftovers" ( this means cakes that the final appearance did not turn out successful, etc..). And that's what we're going to do today.

Ingredients for chocolate balls from reseals:
300 grams of dry cookies (waffles, oreos, butter cookies, biscuits, clicks, etc.) – you can just 300 grams of wild flakes.
200 grams of milk chocolate (we used Kinder eggs that the kids didn't eat, time out, etc.)
3/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons real cocoa
50 grams of butter
Coconut/Candies/Candied Nuts – For Coating
How to prepare:
The simple way is to let the children put all the cookies in a bowl – an adult passes to a food processor and grinds all the cookies.
If you want to work, divide the cookies into bags with a bag bracket on top, close well (or put in a regular bag and tie up). Take a schnitzel rolling pin/hammer and "roll" the cookies to the desired thickness.
At the same time put in a saucepan: milk, chocolate, butter and boil. Add the cocoa and stir until the ingredients are consolidated.
Pour over the biscuits, mix well- cool the pulp and roll into balls.
commentary:
*It is important to explain to children the importance of cleaning your hands before starting work.
*Working with a schnitzel rolling pin/hammer will allow us to work and strengthen a shoulder belt.
*Shapes can be worked on as you prepare – the biscuit is a rectangle, the ball is round, etc.
*It is advisable to let children feel all the materials before dissolving and consolidation, you can also taste to enrich the experience and link any raw material to reality.
*During the whole process it is important to constantly transcribe to children what we do.

Recipe for homemade artiches
So the days pass for them and here comes spring. It's getting cosy outside and it's already an excuse to move on to delicious frozen things that don't require a lot of preparation time (yes require waiting..), There is not much need for groceries and the children can be full partners in the process.
Groceries:
Fruits according to the chosen flavor
Orange/milk/sweet cream juice can be combined to enrich the popsicle for ice cream
A mold for making popsicles (if not, allow in a disposable cup and fill up to the desired size)
Sticks (if you can't cut a drinking straw)
Option 1:
1.Let children squeeze citrus fruits – orange, clementine- pour into a mold and freeze

Option 2:
Grind strawberries+bananas in the blender (you can combine any fruit you like melon/date/orange, etc.)
Add a little liquid – orange juice/milk/heavy cream
Transfer to a mold, add sticks and freeze.

1. It is important to share with the children the importance of washing the fruits and do so together. In this way, the children are exposed to the different textures, the size of the fruits, can smell any fruit that is used.
2. Working with a juicer requires applying force and works on strengthening the shoulder belt and activating the palm. It is important to constantly transcribe to children what to do – on the whole fruit, cutting and what happens to it after squeezing. (It is a good idea to feel the squeezed orange together).)
Option 3: Lymona
Cook half a cup of sugar over a glass of water and reserve in the fridge.
Grind in a mint blender, squeeze 2 lemons and add water. Sweeten to taste with the sugar water we have prepared.
Transfer to molds, put a stick and freeze.
Enjoy!

My children and the staff of the Rehovot branch share with us the preparation of ora

nge juice:

Ingredients:orange, cup (preferably transparent), knife, plank, juicer

Before we begin, we will prepare a clean (and no distraction) area at the kitchen table so that the child sits focused.
Put an entire orange on a plate (preferably white so that the orange can clearly be seen) and explore the orange together – its round shape, its coarse peel, the weight, the smell when you scrape the peel, the taste is bitter, and ask together "Where is the juice?"
Take the plank and knife and with mediation on the child's hand (or if your child is not ready, you can take this step yourself) and slowly cut the orange in the center.
- This is a great opportunity for exploration – to discuss and investigate the wetness of the center versus the dry shell, use your fingers to find and remove the nuclei (if age/ability is appropriate)
With your hand on your child's hand, we'll squeeze the orange together on the juicer.
- Talk about how to press hard, how to turn the orange on the juicer, etc.
- Then take the top of the juicer to show your child the juice he was squeezing

With your hand by your children, pour the juice into a glass.
- Let him feel wet and a little sticky.
- Talk about its pleasant, sweet color and smell
- At last….. Drink and we'll have a drink! (And of course discuss how delicious it is, sweet, cold, etc.)
Last but not least, let your child help you take unrealous tools to the sink. Let them help clean the table.

Enjoy!