Monday, September 21, 2009

The Three Chef-kateers!

All of you with little people in your life that want to be just like you need to get this book. Buy, borrow, or rent, just hurry, winter is coming, do it now!

A friend and I are doing a pre-school swap this semester since we both have kids who won't start kindergarten for two more years--we wanted them to get the fun and exposure to pre-school, but with a more relaxed and flexible schedule and without the pre-school cost and committment.

For the month of September we've been studying food. Where it grows, how it grows, why we should eat a balanced diet, and yes, cooking. We went to the library and looked for books the kids could read to go along with our theme, field trips, etc. There are a lot more books on the topic in the picture-book/early reader section than I would have imagined, and we came away with a dozen or so on various topics. My favorite has to be the book I mentioned at the top of the post. It's called Salad People and it's a picture cookbook with recipes even pre-schoolers can make largely themselves. Obviously each recipe has "adult-only" jobs, but after the intro page and written recipe there are step-by-step picture instructions as well.
It was my turn to host the kids, so we made a little menu, grocery shopped for the items we needed, and then it was cooking time. I was really impressed by how well everybody listened and how patient they were in waiting. Our menu: granola, focaccia bread, and cream of tomato soup. I'd be willing to guess there are a large number of adults who haven't cooked these items from "scratch" but with the instructions in this book they really were easy enough that two 3-year-olds (and a one-year-old who thinks she's three, of course) did it. :) No food tastes better than food you made yourself!

5 comments:

Melanie Eccles said...

wonderful!

Liz K said...

isn't that a fun book? I got it from the library a while back...it was a bit too old for Forrest at this point, but it was something I wanted to log away for when he's older.

Adam and Erin Turner said...

Very cool Liz! What a great idea to do the preschool swap thing. Looks like the kids are learning lots and loving the school idea. We are hoping to do something at home this winter with Lindson too. We bought some books with some cool project ideas but some of them would be too advanced for a 2-3 year old. Anyway, hope you guys are doing great! Miss you all.

KRunyon said...

Can I come over? Another book you might want to read (totally for the fun/food as art idea) is Dog Food by Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann. Elffers has several books where the illustrations are made entirely of food. :-) Very fun for kids and adults!

Rebecca said...

that is very cool. i'll definitely be looking into getting that book!