Cooking for Kids

Fun Cooking Activities & Recipes

Fun Cooking Activities & Recipes

Lesson Plans

Books & Supplies

Great Online Links & Activities

Learning to cook gives kids a chance to help out at home. And what kid doesn't love hearing the family compliment their cooking? What's more, kids often find that food tastes better when they cook it themselves.

With this in mind Earth's Kids has pulled together our tried and true favorite recipes for cooking with kids. We present them here for you to enjoy at home and in the classroom. While some projects are suitable only for older children (age 9 or older), most can be done with very young children. And we've included special tips for doing the projects with preschoolers.

We'll be digging more treasures out of our files soon, so stop back from time to time to see what we've added.

RECIPE SECTIONS

Browse for great recipes and cooking activities!

Hotty Diggity Dog		Toasty Good Ideas
Easy Mexican Favorites		Rolling in the Dough
Easy Cheesy Pizza Projects		Great Snack Mixes
Using Your Noodle		Fruity-licious Fun
Egg Wizardry

Clicking one of the section titles above will cause a new page to open.

A note to parents and teachers:

Cooking can be such an important part of the learning curriculum. Think of it as a kind of laboratory science -- there's weighing and measuring, carefully following directions, observing materials change from one state to another... But it also encourages vocabulary development, eye-hand coordination, sensory integration, even patience and self-reliance. And it starts kids learning an important life skill that will benefit them the rest of their lives. Plus, it's just fun!
And don't forget, cooking together, whether at home or in the classroom, provides an important opportunity for social interaction. So whether you're a preschool teacher trying to teach new vocabulary words and the importance of taking turns, or just a busy and distracted parent trying to create some "together time", sharing a cooking project with kids creates the perfect opportunity.
Finally, cooking requires the exercise of good hygiene skills. This means refraining from licking the spatula or etc. (especially at school), and of course washing hands. So don't miss our special Earth's Kids Science section: The Science of Hand Washing. You'll find great tips, links, helpful printables and more.

CAUTION: We do not recommend allowing children under 12 years old to use a stove or a conventional oven. Microwaves and toaster ovens may be a safe alternative for children 9 years old and up. Close supervision required.
Younger children will need to have an adult cook the projects they have prepared.

Web Earth's Kids

Gabbi's Cooking Page
Really simple baking recipes that kids 9 and up can do (almost) by themselves. Grown-ups needed for supervision, and for help removing hot items from the oven.

The Food Timeline
What we cook depends one what foods we like, but also on what we have to cook with. After all, you can't make cheese without milk. And you can't make milk without some kind of domesticated animal that makes milk, like goats or cows. This site shows when different plants and animals became important domesticated (farmed) food stuffs. But it also shows when different recipes were probably invented. Click on a food item for even more information.

Cooking with Recipes Math

Changing a recipe so that it makes more, or fewer, servings is a great way to practice math skills. Comes with customizable worksheet. Grade 6 and older.

Cooking Up Descriptive Language: Designing Restaurant Menus

This lesson plan focuses on language skills in designing a menu. You can follow the plan exactly (for grades 6-8), redesigning an actual restaurant menu, or use it as inspiration to have your young chefs create a menu of their own.

Cooking Safety Lesson

Complete with a downloadable story and activity sheets this lesson plan focuses on teaching kids to be safe around hot stoves and microwaved items.

Nutrition Education Lesson Plans

A small but wonderful collection of lesson plans from Neat Solutions for Healthy Children. Each plan includes ideas for stories, music, and cooking or other activities that go with the theme of the plan. Plans include Let's Do Pizza and Tortillas, A Wrap! Some plans come with Spanish language versions.

Plant Part Buffet

Here's a great lesson plan/activity to help kids learn about the different parts of vegetables through an edible feast of roots, leaves, stems, flowers, and etc. Includes a planting activity.

Themed Cooking Projects

Make an Abe Lincoln log cabin out of pretzels or make pancakes after reading If You Give a Pig a Pancake. Fun ideas to tie cooking projects together with other curriculum.

What's Cooking - A Colonial Recipe

Based around a recipe page from The Ashfield Recipe Book this lesson plan encourages kids to learn about life in the colonial era. Includes math related activities. For 6th grade and up.