Ideas for Homeschool Cooking

Learning in the Kitchen

Ready for some homeschool cooking lessons? I have heard that the kitchen is the center of the home. So why not make cooking the center of our child's education?

You can teach math, history, culture, and science in the kitchen.

Math

Homeschool cooking involves math. I have had my younger children count the ingredients that go into a recipe. My older children learned about factions and how to measuring. I taught my children that we use different cups to measure dry and liquid ingredients.

I also have children double a recipe to learn about how to add fractions.

Another activity is to have our children change volume measurements to the metric weight measurements. Wikipedia has a good article about cooking weights and measures.

Two Children's cookbooks that I have used when my children were young are;

• My First Cook Book by Angela Wilkes
• My First Baking Book by Angela Wilkes
  

The pictures in the My First cookbooks are great. There are pictures of the ingredients, the measuring tools, steps involved in making the dish, and what the finished dish should look like.

Science

You can do science experiments while cooking. Find an easy recipe. Make the recipe the way that it is written. Next change one of the ingredients. Look for changes in texture and taste.

We have done experiments with changing the type of sweetener in a simple cookie recipe. Honey make a cookie soft and moist while a cookie cooked with white sugar is crispy.

You could also use different fats or interchange baking soda for baking powder in your experiments. Just change one ingredient at a time and make the original recipe so that you can compare the results.

History

After your child has used spices in baking he can research how spices were used in the Middle Ages. He will also learn about how people like Christopher Columbus went looking for a quicker trade route to the east.

Another way we made history interesting was to find cookbooks about different time periods. I have found cookbooks for

• the Civil War,
  
• the time of the cowboys, and
  
• the Oregon Trail.
  

Have your child make some of the recipes in the books.

Geography

Another idea is to use food to teach geography. Have your child locate on a map where food originated from. Where are bananas and pineapples grown?

Culture

Besides history homeschool cooking is useful for teaching about different cultures. Once a week you could study about a different country. On Fridays you could have a food that is eaten in the country.

We have used The Kids' Around the World Cookbook by Deri Robins It has recipes such as;

• Bobotie from Africa,
  
• Soy Chicken Wings from China, and
  
• Stuffed Parathas from India.

 I have also checked out other books from the library.

Homeschool cooking is a fun hands-on way to bring life to your academic subjects.

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Leave Homeschool Cooking for Homeschool Electives

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