IT’S FUN!
Cooking is an engaging and interactive learning experience! Kids gain self-confidence from creating fun, delicious foods or inedible concoctions by making these themselves. Involving kids in the process of cooking helps them feel more invested in the foods and items they create. They may even expand the repertoire of food that they eat.

IT’S LEARNING!
Cooking with kids is a wonderful way to target developmental & academic skills. All our 5 senses of smell, sight, hearing, taste & touch are engaged during the process of cooking, making it an effective learning experience.

Kids use fine motor skills to learn to manipulate a variety of different tools.
Hands get messy, sticky, gooey, wet/dry, mushy, and then we wash it off! Its a crazy sensory experience!
Attention and auditory processing skills increase as kids listen and follow directions to complete a recipe.
Kids use their eyes to visually track steps from left to right or top to bottom.
Science concepts are learned by observing changes in mixing ingredients and temperatures.
Math skills are targeted as kids count the number of ingredients and items in the cooking process. They measure, pour, double, cut recipes in half and learn about fractions.
Cooking promotes literacy skills. By reading ingredients and recipe steps, kids learn to connect words to real-life actions.
Cooking with healthy ingredients promotes a health-conscious child.

IT’S LANGUAGE!
Interactive cooking with others promotes expressive, receptive and pragmatic language growth. Language skills provide the foundational growth for the language of learning: the language of science, math, reading and writing. Kids acquire & use novel vocabulary about kitchen tools, cooking concepts, ingredients and action verbs in recipes.

With this increased use of novel vocabulary, communication skills are fostered:

• Describing & Expanding Sentence Length
• Procedure Retelling from first to last
• Answering Questions
• Inquiring to Gain Information
• Holding conversations with others

IT’S SPEECH and EATING!
The mouth is a complex body-part made up of many anatomical parts with layers of muscles and sensory-receptors used for eating and speech. Oral-motor (mouth) skills are those skills needed for eating and speech production. For various developmental and/or medical reasons, kids may have difficulty using their tongues, lips, cheeks and jaw in a manner that best supports eating a variety of foods or using a variety of speech sounds to talk. Using food that kids have cooked promotes food exploration and helps them gain confidence in themselves and their eating habits. If we’re working on feeding or speech-sound production with your child, the food we have cooked together may be a motivational tool we use during therapy.

IT’S GROUP- PARTICIPATION!

• Kids work as a team with their peers to create finished products.
• Turn-taking and experiential sharing occurs in a social context.
• Opportunities for expressing emotions & problem solving frustrations arise.
• Our Family-Friendly approach encourages sibling participation and parent expertise.