Cooking with preschool age children is a lot of fun. Plus it has many advantages to the preschoolers learning process. The preschooler learns about math and measurements, plus can learn a lot about healthy foods. Below are several cooking ideas to do with preschool children ages 3 to 5 years.
You can make a peanut butter and jelly tortilla sandwich with your preschoolers. This requires no oven or microwave. All you need is to have the children spread peanut butter and jelly or jam on a tortilla and roll it up. This is great because you can talk about where the peanuts came from to make the peanut butter and how they think the jelly was made. The preschoolers are using good motor skills while spreading the peanut butter and jelly. Just make sure that no one is allergic to peanuts before hand or you will have to skip this activity.
Another great idea is to let children make homemade applesauce. This is especially fun to do in the fall. You may even know where there is an apple tree where they can help pick the apples first. The children can help by washing the apples. You will most likely have to peel the apples, but they can help cut them up with a plastic knife as long as supervision is used the whole time. Add the apple to a crock pot with a little water and sugar. You may even want to add cinnamon. Let the applesauce simmer all day and then serve it to the children. They will be amazed at how the chopped apples cook down to the sauce. In the beginning you can even ask what they think will happen to the apples if we cook them all day?
Around the holidays it is fun to bake gingerbread cookies with the children. You can often buy a mix that calls for water and maybe butter. Mix up the dough and let each child help in rolling it out. This is a great motor skill that many children may not have never experienced before. Let them cut out a gingerbread boy or girl with a cookie cutter, then place in the oven and let bake for the recommended time on the box. Cool the cookies, then let the children go to town decorating them. You can lay out different colors of frosting, little candies such as red hots or m and m’s, licorice, colored sugars, and chocolate chips. Children have the opportunity to express their creative side with this fun activity.
I also enjoy making little pizzas with preschool children. There are many variations that you can use for the crust. English muffins make a great crust, but if you use little biscuits the children can spread the dough out themselves. They can cover it with either pizza sauce or spaghetti sauce. Set out a variety of meats and veggies, such as hamburger, pepperoni, canadian bacon, black olives, onions, peppers, mushrooms. Children can decide what they would like on their pizzas and then cover them with cheese if they please.
Around Valentines Day, I like to have the children bring in their favorite kind of candy or snack, whether it be fruit snacks, cheerios, licorice, m and m’s. Then we place a serving in a bowl and cover it with melted almond bark. I then let the children name it. It is pretty funny hearing some of the names that they can come up with. This is a creative experience for them as well.
A fun summer idea is to let the children make ice cream sundaes. Provide plenty of vanilla ice cream and toppings, such chocolate, caramel, whipped topping, bananas, strawberries, chopped nuts, m and m’s, mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, any small candies. Give each child a scoop of ice cream in their bowls and then let the choose whatever toppings they want for a great treat.
Whatever you decide to make with the children, just make sure you know what allergies the children in your group have. If a child can not have milk products, you may decide not to do the ice cream sundaes unless you provide ice cream that is lactose free. Or skip any peanut cooking projects if a child is allergic to peanuts. Make sure that all children wash hands before cooking and disinfect the tables before hand as well. Also talk about if you have to cough or sneeze, you need to turn your head so others cooking is not coughed or sneezed on. And remember that cooking is fun with children and they will have a blast doing it.
