Did somebody say snacks? I love to eat and so do my students. That’s why every Friday we cook/bake! Cooking is a great way for students to work on multiple skills i.e. turn-taking, fine motor, communication, and pre-academic skills! After reading this blof post you will be ready to start cooking in your own classroom!
When we cook it always correlates to the story we are reading that week. We have the luxury of having a convection oven, microwave, and mini-fridge in our classroom. However you 100% do not need these to cook. A lot of our snacks are no-bake which is super convenient. For ones that do require appliances, we do 1 of 2 things. Use the appliance or do TV cooking. What the heck is TV cooking? Have you ever watched a cooking show and seen something miraculous cook in seconds? That is TV cooking. We simply have the students mix all the ingredients and prepare the snack i.e cupcake mix into a cupcake pan. We then put the pan in the oven count to ten and wait for the magic to happen. What’s the magic? We prepare the snack beforehand. So after we put in our uncooked indigents and count to ten I pull out the strategically placed precooked snack. This saves a ton of time. For classrooms that do not have these appliances just do TV cooking with your appliances from housekeeping!
Our snacks are always changing so is the recipe! You can make an ingredient list and step-by-step instructions using Lessoinpix. Don’t have the time for that? No worries! I have a years-long worth of visual recipes for you HERE!
In order to gather all of our ingredients, we use Sign Up Genius. Our wonderful parents and PTA help supply all the needed ingredients! It takes some time to set up but it is great in the long run!
Still not sold on baking in the classroom? Let me tell you some skills it allows you to practice all in ONE activity! Such as….
- Communication, language and AAC (My year long bundle includes a core board and cooking fringe)
- Fine motor
- Following directions
- Counting with 1:1 correspondence
- Spatial and temporal relations
- Measurment
- Color identification
- Sensory intergreation
- Pre-academic readiness skills
- Casue and effect
- and so much more!