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Cooking for the Classroom

Great Sites Center

Each week, the Education World Great Sites for Teaching About ... page highlights Web sites to help educators work timely themes into their lessons. June is Dairy Month, Turkey Lovers' Month, and National Seafood Month. This week's sites are among the best on the Web for introducing cooking into your classroom.


Art and Cooking
http://www.kiddiecampus.com/artcook.htm
Are you looking for ways to introduce kids to cooking and let them create art at the same time? This site may just be the ticket! Art and Cooking offers recipes for different types of dough and finger paint as well as slime and soap paint. You'll especially like the stages of art development if you're working with young children. The USDA daily dietary guidelines for children aged one to six makes a nice tie-in for a nutrition unit.

Cooking on the Trail
http://tqjunior.thinkquest.org/6400/cooking.htm
This ThinkQuest entry presents the conditions pioneers endured cooking and eating while heading west. There are recipes for doughnuts and raspberry quencher and elementary-level descriptions of how pioneers survived on the trail. Did you know a fire for cooking one meal on the frontier required three baskets of buffalo chips? Your students will learn fascinating facts like that at this fascinating site.

Cooking with Monkey
http://www.himonkey.net/cooking/index.html
Monkey is a cuddly stuffed animal who shares his adventures, recipes, and accomplishments with his friends on this site. He offers more than half a dozen recipes, including Rice Krispie treats, cranberry relish, hot cocoa, queso dip, and several seasonal holiday baked goods. Have kids go to monkey's main page to check out his memorable trick-or-treating photos and information about his new novel!

Jell-O Kids' Cooking Fun
http://kraftfoods.com/jello/main.aspx?s=&m=jlo123_index
Jell-O is 100 years old! Kraft offers this site to celebrate the popular gelatin with recipes kids will love making. After all, what could be more tactile and flavorful than Jell-O? Kids can try their hand at Jell-o arts and crafts. They'll also find recipes for "Snacktivities" such as Funny Face Snacks, Dirt Cups, and "Jigglers."

Nutrition Explorations
http://www.nutritionexplorations.org/
The National Dairy Council offers this site to help teachers and families discuss proper nutrition and cooking habits with children. Teacher Central has resources and printable work sheets ready to use in the classroom. Family Food Zone includes Kid's Cooking, which contains more than 100 healthful recipes ready to share. Nutrition Explorations also offers a Classroom Nutrition Calendar and lots of games and activities to keep even the youngest students involved.

Picture Recipes
http://www.bry-backmanor.org/picturerecipes.html
Bry-Back Manor offers two-dozen kid-tested recipes presented in plain text. Each recipe includes a link to the same instructions presented completely in pictures. This is great stuff for non-readers, visual learners, and students testing their problem-solving skills by following non-verbal cues. Simple black images make printing easy.


Article by Walter McKenzie
Education World®
Copyright © 2007 Education World

Originally published 06/26/2001
Links last updated 01/30/2007