Cooking Eggs, 5 Ways!

I haven't done any real cooking with the kids due to the new rules laid out for us at the beginning of this year. Last week during a conversation about table manners and the importance of thanking the person that cooks for you, I noticed that even though I have had parents telling me their kids help cook at home, according to me kids, and what they know, they do not appear to at all. Another reason why I wish I could continue the cooking classes we used to have. 

So today I taught a cooking class. I didn't allow them to help, they sat in a semi-circle in front of me and we talked about what I was doing in each step. We would also pause to write the steps on the board. First we hard boiled, then fried, then scrambled, we made a cheese omelet, then made deviled eggs with the eggs we had hard boiled. You will have to forgive my omelet, I am totally out of practice and it probably could have used another egg for the size pan I had as there was NO flipping that thing!

We have been watching Youtube videos of people cooking all year when I find a good one that's appropriate. This was so much better as they were right up in there and we could talk about each step and they could ask questions.  Luckily no one even asked to try anything which made it a lot easier for me to not have to say no. Apparently eggs are not a hot ticket item with my kids. Oh, and my two female aides guessed 20 and 30 minutes on how long to boil an egg!!!! One said she was even going to go home tonight and do it for 3 minutes to see for herself, lol.

Now, I am going to ask this which I know is going to make me so jealous, but.... Do you do cooking classes with your kids at school? Do they/you have a favorite thing to cook?

FYI... I put a bulletin board up in the kids lunch room today that count's down the days left of school this year, and guess what?  We have 60 more days!!!!

Have a great week,

Ice Cream in a Baggie

It's that time of year again when we get to make ice cream in a baggie!! We did it assembly line style this year, and they added each ingredient as they walked past it on the table. I did help a couple with the vanilla because they couldn't seem to hold the measuring spoon level, but other than that they did it ALL BY THEMSELVES! I didn't even have to help out with any of the shaking this year! It took a few minutes for a couple of my boys to be talked into trying it. We finally just left them alone and after minutes of funny faces and continuously smelling their bags, they gave it a try and were hooked!

*TIP - Place baggie inside a plastic cup while measuring (and eating). This will keep the ingredients from spilling and give the kids two hands to do their measuring with!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Ice-Cream-Recipe-with-Visuals-680057

What Do You Mean We Can't Cook Anymore?

We got some bad news yesterday at work.  Because of food service guidelines we are no longer allowed to serve food to the kids that has not been prepared by our food service providers. This means no more potlucks, no more BBQ's, no more birthday cupcakes, and no more cooking in class (this one makes me the most sad). This will also include the restaurant food my students deliver every other Friday to help earn money for our program.  They have also closed down our student cafe, which sold healthy prepackaged snacks.  OH, and did I mention the popcorn and snow cone machines the students JUST purchased so they could sell these items in the quad on Fridays? Those are out too!

IMO teaching the kids to cook is a MAJOR part of teaching them how to be independent. I only have them for four years! My job is to make them as independent as I possibly can before they leave at age 22 to enter the adult day program where they will most likely spend the rest of their lives. Friday my aide was supposed to be teaching her annual homemade tortilla class with the kids.  Next Tuesday we were having a weenie roast at the park and the week after that we were going to make sandwiches and pack sack lunches to take to the zoo with us. It really makes me sick to think of all these great learning opportunities that ALL the kids in our program will be missing out on!

       COOKING IS AN INDEPENDENT LIVING SKILL!!!

I would love to know how your school handles this kind of thing.  Maybe this is a common practice and we were just behind the times. Please let me know how your school handles non food service food items. How do you teach the kids food prep without using food?  

Thanks for the vent :-(

St. Patty's Treats

 Monday is St. Patrick's Day sooooooo I made these cute little treats for my kiddos (and the office staff... shhhhh). I tried using a Rolo and a Kiss but finally decided on just a dollop of melted white chocolate to hold them all together. Super adorable and super easy to make!  Hope everyone has a great St. Patty's Day!

Don't forget to wear GREEN!!

A Classroom Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Between me and my aides we put together an amazing feast on Wednesday for the kids.  We had been working on table manners so this was a great way to end the lesson. The kids also learned how to make homemade cranberry sauce and pumpkin pies.  
Next week is going to be very busy at school.  We are having a window decorating contest that I am so excited about! My class is making a hand print Christmas tree and also going to be elfing ourselves and turning it all into a North Pole theme! We have to have the window done by Friday for the judging.  I can't wait to see what it will look like all put together.  I will post pics when we have it completed!  

Don't forget Teachers pay Teachers is having their cyber Monday and Tuesday sale this week.  I will have all my products at 20% off and TPT will add to that for a total of 28% off.  Be sure to use the code "cyber" when checking out. Hope you find everything you are looking for!  

Using Visual Recipes

As you can probably tell from some of my previous posts, I absolutely love cooking with my kids!  We don't get to do in near as often as I would like since we have to finance it with our own money and it can get quite pricey. We still are trying to do it at least once or twice a month, and my aide are great about helping out with ingredients!

Every time we get ready to try a new recipe I like to have a visual to go with it. This way we can go over the recipe step by step before we head into the kitchen to do the actual cooking. We always send a copy home (in hopes that their folks let them try to make it there) and we put one in their binders that they take home when they graduate. As you can see they go from pretty basic recipes to a little more challenging as to try to find things that all my kids will be able to make independently.

You can find the recipe book here:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Follow-Along-Recipes-989267

Dirt Cups

~ Week 3 ~

For our cooking class this week we made Dirt Cups.  I was trying to find another reason for the kids to use the knives and cutting boards again and this worked out great!  Each student was given 3 Oreo cookies to make into "dirt".  After the cookies were cut, we made one box of chocolate pudding as directed and added a half container of Cool Whip (I have no idea why I added this). The students than layered half their "dirt", a ladle of the "mud", the other half of their "dirt" and topped each with a gummy worm!  

Great fun!

Cooking Class - Hamburger Cookies

Week 2 - Today we made these adorable hamburger cookies in our cooking class! The kids got a kick every time I said "add your mustard/ketchup now".  I think every one of them said at least once "I don't like mustard/ketchup/lettuce."  I had to keep reassuring them that it was frosting!  They were able to put these together all on their own.  Time from start to finish about 30 minutes.   

Hamburger Cookies:

Vanilla Wafers
Grasshopper Cookies (Keebler)
Yellow frosting
Red frosting
green tinted coconut

We mixed the coconut and yellow frosting ourselves.  I wasn't sure I could get a good red color for the ketchup so I bought that one already mixed and in a tube.

Cooking Classes

 I have taught ESY (extended school year) for the last 10 years and absolutely love it!  While sticking to my usual topics I teach, I try to make ESY a little more hands-on, interesting and fun. This year we are doing "electives" two days a week, and I signed up to do a cooking class!  Today we did fruit kabobs!!!

The concentration on their faces when they were cutting and skewering was priceless! 

The cutting boards I found at the 99 cent store and the lettuce knives I ordered online from Casa.com for about 4 dollars a piece. The kids picked their own fruit, cut it into bite size pieces and threaded them onto their skewers.  They did an amazing job and were so proud of their creations (which they promptly ate!)

Here is what else we are making this summer:  Rice Krispy Treats, Dirt Cups (complete with gummy worms) and Hamburger Cookies!  I can't wait!

Kitchen Measuring

Here is a small packet on kitchen measuring.  I have included measuring with liquid measuring cups, dry measuring cups and measuring spoons.  Great to use in your classroom before you start actual cooking classes.  

 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Kitchen-Measuring

Hamburger Helper visual Recipe

I love using these visual recipes with my students.  My students are totally capable of preparing something like this with a little bit of help.  I really want to do a lot more cooking in my classroom this year.   They all LOVE to cook!  I am always surprised and saddened on how many of my students don't get the opportunity at home to cook.  Here is a basic recipe for hamburger helper.   This will not work for all varieties  and I did not put amounts of each ingredient, as each box was a little different.  Do you cook with your students?  What kinds of thigs are fun and easy to cook in the classroom?  I will give away this recipe card to the first 5 people who comment below.  Be sure to leave your email address!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Hamburger-Helper-Recipe-with-Visuals

Cooking Terms

I am putting together a curriculum of cooking skills for next year.  I thought this would be a fun way to learn cookbook terms for the kids.  There are 28 words and pictures in all.  I am going to laminate mine so they will last a lot longer.  You could easily play memory with them too!   

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Cooking-Terms-Word-Match




Example ------------------------->

Measuring Devices

There definitely needs to be dialog that goes with this worksheet.  Some of the ingredients, depending on amount needed, would use both the spoons and the cups. 

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B8NVsf6Y1KIvbUlYNklnYVh6OTA

Food Storage / Morning Folders

My students all arrive at different times in the morning, which makes it very difficult to teach a class before their breakfast is served.  For the past 2 year I have been having the students write a morning message, since it can be done in their own time as they arrive.  It contains the date, the weather, what we plan to do that day and than a note on what we will be doing tomorrow.  I am not sure how much my students are really gaining from this, so I have decided to put together morning notebooks for next year.  Now that I have started I see that this will be more work than I had anticipated.  Each morning should start out with the students logging the weather and temperature than doing a worksheet/activity from the folder.  Mondays they will have to log the weekly schedule into the monthly calendar which will be placed in the front of their folders.  I hope to have a quarters worth of pages ready at a time.  So far I am thinking, Mondays - newspaper skills, Wednesdays -morning warm up, (which I posted a week ago), and Fridays - money math. Now to fill in the other two days!  I will be posting things as I create!

Here is one on food storage.  I tried to pick common grocery items that our kids would have knowledge of.  Maybe Tuesdays will be food/health/nutrition?

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B8NVsf6Y1KIvMm9vZTFOdUxlN2c

Measuring with liquid measuring cups

My kids love measuring!  We practice with liquid measuring cups, dry measuring cups and measuring spoons.  Here is a quick worksheet on liquid measures.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Measuring-Cups