Adding Fun Into Your Homeschool: Cooking

I don’t know about your house but in my house, everyone seems to expect at least three meals a day! When someone is in a growth spurt, you can add in second breakfast and several snacks. This means that I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. My children love to be in the kitchen with me, helping cook and ‘sneaking’ samples. I decided years ago that I needed to make the most of that time.

*Some of the links in my posts may be affiliate links see below for more information. *

When I allow and encourage my children to join me in the kitchen it opens up lots of opportunities for fun and learning to happen, all while we are completing a necessary task. When they are young they are working on fine motor skills while they stir, crack eggs, and chop up fruits and vegetables with their special knives. As they get older the opportunities multiply.

Young students learn about fractions as they use measuring cups or double recipes. They can also practice various forms of measurement with tablespoons, cups, pints, and quarts. To incorporate math into cooking with older students you can look at the nutritional information, cost per serving, or other factors to use real-life math applications.

Incorporating Cooking into Your Homeschool

We have had the opportunity to incorporate cooking into a variety of our science curricula. When we did Apologia’s Swimming Creatures, we tried to cook something that applied to each chapter when possible. We had fish, clams, oysters, shrimp, and crabs. The children really enjoyed it.

We have also used cooking to study chemistry. You can study how yeast makes bread rise, or how different things react to lemon juice. You can make salad dressing with and without an emulsifier and see what happens. You can make ice cream in a bag with salt on the ice and without, seeing the effects of the salt. For more examples of chemistry in the kitchen, you can check out this post at A2Z Homeschool.

Cooking and History

Our favorite way to incorporate cooking into our homeschool has been in our history and geography studies. I first got the idea when we were using Story of the World for history and they occasionally included recipes with the chapters. Most of them were recipes from the region and time periods we were studying, such as a Japanese tea and Apache fry bread.

Sometimes they were projects that related to the lesson through a creative idea such as using cookie dough to make the Parthenon. We began adding food to as many history lessons as possible because we found that the children really enjoyed it and the sensory experience of a meal made it easier for them to remember what they learned.

Just this past week we enjoyed a Polish Christmas feast. It was complete with a poppy seed cake based off of the study of Chopin in the music appreciation course that my daughter is currently working through. She baked the cake, made beet soup, perogies, kielbasa and sauerkraut. I never thought I would use cooking to learn about music but it just shows you that you can weave a seemingly mundane everyday task into just about any subject.

Have you ever incorporated cooking into your homeschool? Do your children enjoy getting in the kitchen and helping with meals and snacks? For more ideas about getting your children involved in the kitchen check out Homeschool in the Kitchen. Don’t forget to check out all of the other blog hop posts and check back tomorrow for more fun ideas.

UPDATE: Check out the subscriber library for free summer cooking challenges for young children and teens!

CREW @ Homeschool Review Crew – 2019 Annual Not Back to School Homeschool Blog Hop

Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses – ABC of Homeschooling

Dawn @ Schoolin’ Swag – Adding Fun to Your Homeschool Day

Erin @ For Him and My Family – Large Family Homeschooling

Lori @ At Home Where Life Happens – Learning Life Skills

Monique @ Mountain of Grace Homeschooling – Homeschooling the High School Years

Monique D. @ Early Learning Mom – Homeschooling With Autism

Yvie @ Homeschool On the Range – 5 Days of Upper Grades Homeschooling

Abby @ Making Room 4 One More – Time Management for Homeschool Moms

Amanda @ Hopkins Homeschool – 5 Days of Homeschool Questions

Amy @ the WRITE Balance – Year-Round Schooling

Annette @ A Net in Time – Homeschooling.

Betty @ Lets Get Real – Homeschooling High School

Cassandra @ My Blessed Mess – Eclectic Homeschooling
Kimberley @ Vintage Blue Suitcase – Roadschooling with a Teenager

Yvonne @ The Life We Build – 5 Days of Relaxed Homeschooling

Destiny @ Some Call It Destiny – Encouragement for the Homeschooling Mom

Karen @ Tots and Me…Growing Up Together – A Peek into Our Homeschool

Cassie D @ Deputie Tribe – Homeschooling 6 Taking Care of YOU

Kristen Heider @ A Mom’s Quest to Teach –Theme: A Quest for a Great Homeschool Year

Patti Pierce – Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy – My Favorite Homeschooling Things

Wendy @ Life on Chickadee Lane – 5 Days of Nature Study

Jacquelin @ A Stable Beginning – Homeschooling my final 4

Christine @ Life’s Special Necessities – Yes! You Can Homeschool Your Special Needs Child

Sally M – Tell the Next Generation – Tips for Homeschooling Struggling Learners

Kim @ Good Sweet Love – Last Year of Elementary

https://www.linkytools.com/thumbnail_linky_include.aspx?id=293886

Resource Library and Affiliate Disclosure

When you sign up for the Schoolin’ Swag free resource library you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.

Resource Library

This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.