This was our 4th session of Preschool Cooks & Books! We’ve gotten more and more comfortable with doing these preschool cooking programs and have been having a lot of fun with them!
Description: Read about your food and eat it, too! We’ll read a book, sing some songs, and make a delicious new recipe each month! Ages 3-6.
Details: This is a 1.5hr program for kids 3-6 years old with their caregiver. We set out to have two main portions of the program. 1) the cooking/instructions/hands-on component. 2) a short storytime to reinforce the foods and concepts we did during cooking, which also allows us to finish up cooking or baking as they’re getting wiggles out during the storytime.
Budget: The budget for each session is up to $100, a bit higher than I’d do for one session, but the cost of food was the main portion. We usually only end up spending about $60.
With some of the basics and goals out of the way, here’s what we did for this session:
Welcome & Safety: We started our program as we always do with our kitchen programs. We talk about how the kitchen has some tools in it that need a healthy dose of respect and we all need to use safe bodies while in the kitchen. We reiterate that our grownups are expected to be actively engaged and help their child wherever they can. Another small part of safety is making sure we’re washing our hands before handling the food.
Setting it up: Once we had our hands washed, we were ready to jump in! This was another session that was difficult in that we needed to prepare something ahead of time. The dough needed time to rise, so we made it the night before the program. That gave it plenty of time to rise and be ready for rolling out. We always want to have the kids make something, though, so we decided to make the pizza sauce during the program.
Instructions: Each table made a batch of the sauce – some to use on the pizza during the program and some to take home. Kids at each of the tables took turns adding in the ingredients and stirring up the sauce. Because this was our 4th session, C and I were feeling really solid on the cooking and instructing part of things. So we decided to start adding in early literacy components. While they stirred their sauce, we led them in singing a song to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” The words we used were “Stir, stir, stir your sauce! Stir it nice and neat! Stir, stir, stir, stir, then we get a treat!” We sang it with them a few times through as they mixed the ingredients.
After the sauce was done, they were ready for the dough! We gave everyone a piece of parchment paper to roll out their pizza dough with a rolling pin. Once it was rolled out, we asked them to put some of the sauce they made on top of the dough and to add toppings we provided (pepperoni, green peppers, black olives, mushrooms, and of course, cheese!) The final thing we had them do is write their name on a corner of the parchment paper so that we wouldn’t lose track of which pizza belonged to who. We explained that we were going to bake their pizzas in the ovens while they were in storytime so that the dough could cook and the cheese would melt.
Storytime: It was time for a break for the kids to go to a storytime about Pizza! We have two ovens in our teaching kitchen so while the kids were in storytime, I rotated the pizzas into the ovens 2 in each. With 12 kids participating, the entire batch was done in plenty of time.
Finishing Up: When the kids came back in, their pizzas were waiting for them on the counters and they dug in! The caregivers were really interested in knowing all about it after tasting it, so even though each participant leaves with the recipe card, I went through the steps and reiterated how easy it was to make the dough (especially if you have a mixer available).
Here’s the recipe we used and gave to all our participants:
Librarian Ginny 