The kitchen offers huge learning opportunities for children. It offers us a field of experimentation with the five senses and practical mathematics of enormous value.
But the experience of cook with our children it undoubtedly requires attention and time, long conversations and a disposition of mind perhaps at odds with the rush and the search for immediate results, a negative characteristic of our urban culture, but it connects us with the way in which families have woven their ties always, to the heat of fire, to respect for what the Earth gives us, for life, for the loving preparation of food that nourishes the body and strengthens bonds. It offers us, therefore, an opportunity to live at a slower and more conscious pace.
Cooking with children It is also a magnificent setting for shared learning and experimentation, from the basics of understanding our senses to the knowledge of the long path that human beings make us now.
Of course, we also have to prepare ourselves not to be too fond of cleaning the child. You will smear and pretend everything, but enjoy the experience that is also learning. Who said that to learn you have to keep your hands clean and your clothes untouched?
The five senses
Food, once in the fire, releases steam and odors, converting part of its matter to the gaseous state and releasing small molecules that enter our nose leaving us an olfactory trace of the solid compound that we will then eat. In addition, playing with spices, we can identify many aromatic plants and seeds.
The colors also change when the food warms: the Lombard darkens and dyes the whitest parts raw and the cooking water a pretty purple color.
All colors, flavors, smells, textures and even sounds are present in the kitchen, allowing children to experience, know and name them.
The reasons why something is sweet, cold, slimy, colorful, tasty, aromatic, sticky or stain are intellectual experiences that are based on experimentation with the five senses, and these are the kings of the kitchen, magical and real at the same time, dominated by the human hand but always surprising and with their own nature. The kitchen is a magical place for children.
Mathematics in the kitchen
In the kitchen we get used very soon to work with quantities. A lot or a little, one, two, three. Time is also present, by measuring how long it takes to make each food. Magnitudes, quantities, measurements and time, everything comes together and must be managed to achieve the desired result, as an alchemist or, certainly, a mathematician.
We measure and weigh liquids and solids, even understanding that weight and volume are different magnitudes and that in each material they are related in different proportions as well.
There are things that weigh more and others less, so the oil of a stew usually floats on the aqueous broth. The chickpeas stay in the bottom of the cooking pot but the carrot and potato are usually on top because they weigh less. Density and weight are concepts that we will handle in the kitchen without even realizing it.
We can even use a scale to weigh the food if we follow a recipe and, by helping us, the children will better understand what a gram and a kilo are without having to approach these measures for the first time on paper or a school book. Practical and tasty math, much more enduring in memory than an exercise on something not lived.
The kitchen, the great learning laboratory for children
When a child accompanies us in the kitchen We must be prepared for two things: extreme safety measures with sharp instruments and fires and be ready for the inexhaustible curiosity of the little ones, who are going to ask us thousands of questions in this fascinating learning laboratory.
And in addition to science, math or physics cook with the children it will offer us new challenges, conversations about the functioning of our bodies, health, life and the History of Man, as we will see in the following topic.
