I am very lucky in that my job involves teaching primary school children to cook. Yep, I cook all day long, 5 days a week - and get paid for it!! Good eh?
I am now into my fourth year at this school so my current year 5 class have cooked with me since they were in year 2. They are now all competent little cooks, confident in handling sharp knives and more than capable of following a recipe by themselves with only minimal support from me.
However, when we started out in year 2, our 'theme' for the year was 'Dips and Dippers'. We made all sorts of dips from Cheese 'n Chive to Avocado. None of the children had even seen, let alone tasted an avocado. After de-stoning this fruit, we did the 'sticking cocktail sticks in the base and suspending it over a glass of water' experiment. (see, Food Technology can be cross-curricular!) Lo and behold, after a few weeks the long root started to grow out of the bottom and leaves started to sprout from the top. We planted it in some soil and managed to grow a plant about 18" tall!
The majority of them enjoyed the taste of avocado and have continued to eat it.
Year 3 brought 'Pack up your Lunch'. We started by making our own tomato soup, then roasted some tomatoes in the oven with basil and garlic and froze the resulting puree for the following weeks pizza. We made pizza using different types of base and calzones and pasties made an appearance too.
In year 4, they were studying World War II in class, so our cooking sessions looked at how difficult it was to make ends meet when food was rationed. We tasted oatmeal sausages, potato scones, wartime carrot cake and corned beef fritters. The second set of sessions we looked at Egyptian food to tie in with their study of the Egyptians.
They are coming to me for the first time today as Year 5's. These next few weeks we will be looking at different sorts of bread, starting with soda bread but also making pretzels, cheddar bread, bread rolls, pizza bread and flatbreads. Their second session will look at Indian breads as Hinduism is their class topic.
These children are so lucky to have the opportunity to cook at school. Many of them tell me that although they 'make cakes' with nanny, they do not do a lot of cooking with mummy. I fear that mummy grew up in the convenience era when most cooking was ping-ding in the microwave. Many mums go out to work now and simply don't have the time to cook from scratch. Many are just not interested.
However, being able to cook is, I believe, a life skill equally as important as learning to read, write and count. Without the means to be able to cook healthy, tasty food from scratch the children of today will continue to exist on a diet of processed foods because that's all they've ever known and obesity will become the norm.
In a way, I also feel a little sorry for these children because by the time they move on to secondary school they will be so far ahead of the other children in Food Technology lessons that I fear they will get bored when they have to make a cheese toastie in lesson 1!!!
I feel passionately that cooking should be a part of both the primary and secondary curriculum and that after-school cooking clubs should attract funding.
I have seen first-hand the benefits of teaching young children to cook. They are all now more adventurous in their tastes and are willing to try new flavours. We are also learning to identify herbs and spices from their appearance and smell. Their eyes have been opened to the possibilities in the kitchen and I hope that they do not lose their enthusiasm for cooking and food. We are using numeracy, literacy, history, science and geography in the kitchen not to mention the social skills like sharing, teamwork and helping others.
What's not to like?
What about you, dear Reader? Do you have children who cook at school? Do you cook at home with them? Do you think cooking should be on the National Curriculum?
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