Using Cooking to Support Your Child’s Learning

Recipes are great for helping kids develop their reading and reading comprehension skills. You can also spark an interest in geography and culinary traditions around the world by choosing recipes from different cultures. Here are some of the skills that can be developed by reading recipes:

• Reading comprehension: Ask your child to read the recipe aloud and summarize each step to make sure they understand it. Get inspired by our reading suggestions for elementary and high school kids who like to cook.

• Vocabulary: Ask your child to make a list of new words they find in recipes and encourage them to think of synonyms and antonyms and use the words in new sentences.

• Second language: Practise reading recipes in another language to reinforce your child’s language skills. If French is not the language you speak at home, French recipes are a great place to start!

• Geography: Explore the world from home by cooking traditional recipes from other countries with your child. Food is a great way to get your child interested in learning about different cultures.

• Mathematics: Math skills are essential for calculating the number of servings in a recipe, adjusting ingredient quantities, keeping track of time, converting temperatures, and more.

Meal planning and budgeting are important life skills that your child can develop by accompanying you to the grocery store. You can also take this opportunity to stimulate your child’s memory and observation skills. For example, they could check the pantry or fridge to make a list of what needs to be replaced and memorize a few of the items. Here are some other ideas:

• Writing a grocery list: Ask your child to help you put together your grocery list, grouping items by category (fruit, vegetables, proteins, etc.).

• Environment: Talk to your child about how their choice of products and grocery stores can impact the environment. Explain how buying organic and local food when you can helps lower your carbon footprint or how buying groceries in bulk reduces the amount of packaging that will end up in a landfill.

• Budgeting and saving: Set a grocery budget and ask your child to manage part of it, such as the amount set aside for fruit. This will help them grasp the concept of a price-quality ratio. Comparing brands and discounts will help them develop useful home economics skills.

• Calculating change: A fun way to practise grocery shopping and learn to count out change is by playing Alloprof’s printable money counting game, The Allomarket.

• Nutrition: Talk to your child about the importance of a balanced diet, and teach them to read nutrition labels so they can understand the nutritional value of foods. Emphasize the importance of limiting the consumption of highly processed foods and understanding how marketing can influence our food choices. You can refer to Canada’s Food Guide for recommendations on healthy, balanced eating. If your child is young, this video explains what a balanced plate looks like. Canada’s Food Guide also includes a downloadable educational activity booklet.

Kids can work on a variety of skills while preparing a meal:

• Following instructions: Just like following the protocol for a scientific or technological experiment, following a recipe helps your child learn to do things in a logical order and develop their ability to follow directions.

• Measurements and conversions: Help your child take volume and weight measurements and convert between different units of measurement (e.g., cups to millilitres, millilitres to ounces).

• Chemistry and physics: Observe the chemical and physical transformations that food goes through during the cooking process (e.g., meat browning, ice cream freezing, dough rising). When using kitchen utensils and appliances (can openers, hand-crank mixers, corkscrews, pizza cutters, etc.), take the opportunity to explore how they work together, and draw connections with the principles of simple machines.

• Coordination and fine motor skills: Cutting, mixing, and plating dishes helps develop dexterity and hand-eye coordination. Younger children can do low-risk tasks such as washing vegetables, measuring ingredients, and mixing dough.

Plating is about more than portion size—it’s also an exercise in creativity and personal expression:

• Visual arts: Encourage your child to play with colours, shapes, and food placement to create a visually appealing plate. You could also support their interest in photography or drawing by encouraging them to create an illustrated cookbook.

• Oral expression: Ask your child to describe the flavours and textures of their dish as if they were a critic on a cooking show, which can enrich their descriptive vocabulary.

• Attention to detail: Plating and garnishing a dish require attention to detail, a quality that is useful both at school and in the working world.

• Using the five senses to evaluate food: Ask your child to use their senses of sight, touch, taste, smell, and even hearing to judge the quality and freshness of food. Talk to them about the different categories of flavours.

Canned and frozen fruit and vegetables can be healthy choices. They’re usually less expensive than fresh fruit and vegetables when the latter are out of season. Food preservation can be used to teach valuable lessons about ecological awareness, planning, and science:

• Microbiology: Teach your child the basics of food preservation, such as the importance of pasteurization, refrigeration, and sterilization to slow the growth of micro-organisms.

• Ecology: Talk to your child about ways to reduce food waste by storing food properly and using leftovers creatively. Planning meals ahead of time makes it easier to account for the availability of seasonal produce and local products. Cutting back on packaging when possible is another way to reduce the carbon footprint of our food choices.