Activity Plan 4-5: A Classroom Cookbook

Julia Child, move over! Children have fantastic recipe ideas.

• PRINT
• EMAIL

Ready-To-Use Teaching Ideas: Language/Art

Materials:

• a few cookbooks or magazine recipes
• chart paper and drawing paper
• markers, crayons, and pencils
• oaktag
• clear contact paper

Objective: Making this classroom cookbook will help children increase their vocabulary and develop sequencing skills. This project encourages individuality, creativity, and group process.

In Advance: Prepare drawing paper to include a separate section for drawing and writing.

ACTIVITY

1  Ask children how they believe a favorite food is actually prepared. (Be prepared for some original and humorous answers.) Then share cookbook and recipe pages from magazines with the children. Encourage them to describe what they see. Ask: Why is there a photograph of the food? What do you think the words in the recipes describe? Why are numbers in the recipes?

2 Tell the children that they will create a class cookbook describing how they would cook or prepare a favorite food. Ask them to share their ideas for the cookbook. Will they each write a favorite recipe? Will the recipes be favorite breakfast foods, snack foods, lunch foods, or will the book include a variety of recipes?

3 Provide each child with the prepared paper and drawing materials. Invite the children to draw a picture of a favorite food in the large space on the paper. Explain that an adult will help each child write his recipe.

4 Invite the children to brainstorm ideas for their cookbook's title and cover. Ask: How do you want to organize your recipes? You may want to show the children the cookbooks again and talk about how cookbooks are put together.

5 Attach their recipes onto oaktag, cover with clear contact paper, and use book rings to bind the pages. Their cookbook will make a wonderful holiday gift for parents, so make a copy for each child. Keep an additional copy in your housekeeping area.

Remember: Write each child's recipe exactly as she describes it.

Curriculum Connection

Field Tip: A trip to a local restaurant, pizzeria, or bakery can provide children with a wonderful opportunity to learn about how a favorite food is prepared. Invite children to prepare a list of questions they would like to ask during their visit. Consider taking along a portable tape recorder and camera to record the steps of the recipe the children are learning about. Children can then make the recipe at school.

Risa Young is the former director of two early childhood programs in the New York City area, the Children's Aid Society's Greenwich Village Center and the Innovative Learning Center at the Long Island College Hospital. She has been a consultant to Early Childhood Today for more than eight years.

Activity Plan 4-5: Outdoor Art-ventures!
Children will explore their creativity as they observe the world outside the classroom in this ready-to-use teaching idea for four- and five-year olds. Activity:Art.

Printable Activities: Create Bookmarks, Greeting Cards, Door Hangers with the Characters from Kung Fu Panda
Fun end-of-the-school-year activities, including the "Create Your Own Printable" activity, in which students can customize their own designs to create bookmarks, cards, and door hangers.

Send Home Activities: Storybook Clay Creations
Preschool at-home art activity. Kids make their own clay and use books with clay illustrations as inspiration for their sculptures. Children then write stories about their clay characters.