Aspire Manor Lakes’ Mini MasterChef Lessons!
Aspire Early Education Manor Lakes has recently started holding MasterChef cooking incursions with their centre children. These lessons are a real hit! The children are excited to learn basic cooking skills and especially enjoy eating the food they make. Read on to discover why teaching young children to cook is essential for their growth and development, and how Manor Lakes has implemented this.
Everyone knows we need to know how to cook in order to survive, but many other elements make learning to cook at a young age especially important.
Children hone their fine motor skills by cooking. Cutting soft fruits with a kid-safe knife, measuring flour and rolling out biscuit dough can all improve fine motor skills. It also helps with developing hand-eye coordination. Practising these kinds of skills can help children in many practical ways, such as writing more steadily, opening a lunchbox at school, or tying their shoelaces.
Cooking can also help children understand basic mathematical and scientific concepts. STEM is brought from the kitchen into the classroom in ways such as measuring ingredients, chemical reactions that happen in food and the method of cooking.
Additionally, cooking can help children gain a sense of independence as they are responsible for different steps in the cooking method. Allowing your children some freedom when cooking helps boost their self-esteem, confidence, and sense of self-worth.
At Aspire Manor Lakes, chef Vanessa has been busy not just whipping us delicious meals in the kitchen, but also cooking with the children.
Recently she taught the kinder children how to make cupcakes. It was an exciting time, where the children learned about why measuring out ingredients is important and how food cooks. The children and MasterChef Vanessa had such a fun time baking together!
Vanessa came back into the classroom to decorate the cupcakes once they had baked and cooled down! She had prepared some buttercream frosting for the children to pipe onto their baked goods. This was a fantastic lesson in fine motor skills, by controlling the pressure of the piping bag to vary the flow of the icing onto the cupcake.
Vacancies are now open at Aspire Early Education Manor Lakes! To schedule a guided tour or enrol, call 1800 978 429, or submit an enquiry through this link.
