Culinary Arts: The Kitchen

Once a week, students across all grade levels are invited to our on-site Kitchen to immerse themselves in the Culinary Arts program with guidance from a professional chef!

The art and science of cooking can enhance a child’s abilities in so many ways. Traditional classroom lessons, including Math, Science and Language Arts, come to life and are reinforced while essential life skills are developed through our cooking program. Equally important, creativity and confidence flourish when students realize that they can transform simple ingredients into delicious creations.

Students have opportunities to strengthen and develop fine and gross motor skills as they participate in cooking tasks like stirring, kneading, and pouring through cooking experiences.  The step-by-step nature of following a recipe helps build children’s comprehension and reasoning skills. Students practice patience, follow directions, enhance their creativity, and build self-confidence.

In addition to cooking skills, our classes include age-appropriate discussions about math, science, nutrition, food definition, kitchen and equipment safety, safe food handling and food presentation. When cooking, children have the opportunity to observe changes in food ingredients. They learn about temperature (hot and cold), floating, sinking, dissolving, melting, and freezing. During cooking experiences, students learn counting, measuring, and following directions. Simple concepts about quantity are learned, and conversations about color, texture, shape, and sizes frequently occur.  Cooking also involves reading and communicating. Children’s vocabulary is enriched as they become familiar with new terms such as mise-en-place (everything in place), drizzle, refrigerate, slice, boil, broil, and cream to name a few.