What’s Cooking? - Day One—To Market
There is nothing more “multi-sensory” than cooking with kids. My hope is that you will not limit cooking to this one week but that you might extend these activities and others over the course of the entire year.
Circle Time Ideas
Look Who’s Cooking!!
Bring all sorts of cooking utensils to the circle and ask the children if they can identify their uses.
You could bring the following utensils:
- Measuring cups and spoons
- Sifter
- Blender
- Egg separator
- A wire whisk
- A food processor
- A rolling pin
- A meat thermometer
- Fancy gadgets you might have
haven’t done any. I would be an irresponsible lesson plan writer if I didn’t remind you to make cooking rules. Nobody cooks until their hands are washed. If they forget and pick their noses, scratch their toes or poke their ears, they should wash their hands again.
Good Book
To Market To Market
By Anne Miranda
Remember the old lady who goes to the market to buy a fat pig? She goes home again, home again jiggity jig. Or does she? In this version, the old lady brings home a pig. Then, she brings home a hen and realizes that the pig has made quite a mess. The pig, hen, goose, trout, lamb, cow and goat wreak havoc in her home. So, she goes back to the market and buys vegetables to make everybody soup. This is a wonderful book for us to begin with. The illustrations are fantastic and the story is so funny. The children will want to explore every page.
Sing the Traditional Song
After reading the story, introduce the children to rhyme that came first. Insert the names of the animals that the lady brought home and let the children finish each stanza by inserting the proper rhyme. For example: To market, to market to buy a live trout, Home again, home again jiggety-jout.
|
To Market
To Market, to market, To buy a fat pig, Home again, home again, Jiggety-jig. To market, to market, To buy a fat hog, Home again, home again, Jiggety-jog. To market, to market, To buy a plum bun, Home again, home again, Market is done. |
My Grocery List
Ahead of time, stock your market shelves (toy shelves) with the vegetables that the lady bought for her soup. Label each vegetable with a sign in bold, block lettering. Then, make 8-10 grocery lists that the children can use to go shopping. Do you have toy grocery carts? How about a small wagon? Let them “shop” by matching the words on their grocery lists with the words near the vegetables. A list might say, 2 potatoes, 1 beet, and 4 tomatoes. Have a cash register ready for the children to check out with the cashier.
- Potatoes
- Celery
- Beets
- Tomatoes
- Pea Pods
- Peppers
- Garlic
- Spices
- Cabbage
- Brown Rice
- Onions
- Carrots
Beginning on day two, we will be reading four different versions of the traditional tale of The Little Red Hen. Each story has similarities and differences that you can explore with the children. And each story has a fun, cooking project to go with it. You will need to find a hen puppet or hen stuffed animal for this fun introduction to our cooking unit. Hold the hen in your hand and pretend like she is whispering in your ear. After listening to her whisper, ask the children, “Are you lazy?” Give them plenty of time to talk about the meaning of the word LAZY. Have the hen puppet ask the children, “Who will help me do some cooking this week?” Stand up and walk from child to child asking, “Will you help me cook?” Allow plenty of time for the children to answer. Remember the dog the cat and the goose? They answered, “Not I,” when asked the same question. What will the children say?
Messy Table
Exploring the Utensils
Fill large tubs with water and allow the children to experiment with the utensils we looked at earlier. Show them how to beat the water with a wire whisk and measure the water with the measuring devices. This should be a time of free play and fun.
Cut & Color Table
Clipping Coupons
Ask parents to bring in their weekend circulars. Children love clipping coupons! When they find foods they really like, let them clip the coupons out and put them in an envelope. They will drive their parents crazy wanting to go to the store to redeem them. You will need a lot of coupons to satisfy the crazy, coupon clipping cravings of preschoolers.
Creative Art
Vegetable Prints
Things you will need:
- A variety of vegetables cut in half (peppers make beautiful prints)
- Green, red, orange and yellow paint
- Large paper
The Cooking Center
This week, we will have a separate table just for cooking.
Making Soup
Invite the children to this table to chop vegetables into bite-sized chunks and add them to the soup pot. Follow the recipe below or use one of your own. Let the soup simmer throughout the day to fill the room with it’s aroma. The children can pretend to be the animals from the story as they eat the soup.
Ingredients:
- 6 cups beef broth
- 2 large potatoes, diced
- 4 carrots, diced
- 2 tomatoes
- 1 green pepper
- 2 celery stalks
- Some Pea pods
- 1 green onion, chopped
- 1/2 cup cabbage shredded
- 1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt
- 1 TBS minced parsley
A Good Book
Slop Goes the Soup—A Noisy Warthog Word Book
By Pamela Duncan Edwards
Outside
I hope you have a large, sand box/ dirt area where the children can make mud pies. Read the following book and then encourage the children to make mud pies, crumb cake, and other slimy delights for a special tea party with the classroom dolls. Bring a special table outside for them to serve tea to the dolls.You will be so glad that you found this book. It is really special.
Mud-Pies and Other Recipes: A Cookbook For Dolls
By Marjorie Rutner
