Aspire Tarneit North’s Inspiring Young Cooking Chefs

Cooking can be a fun experience for young children, and can provide many benefits for their growth, learning and development. That's why at Aspire we offer cooking programs and experiences for our different age groups that promote lifelong skills and encourage healthy eating. Below are some of the key benefits of cooking with young children and why we believe its important to implement in our Aspire Early Education curriculum.

Benefits of Cooking in Early Education

• Builds basic math's and literacy skills – Cooking can help children build on their basic math's skills by doing something as simple as counting how many eggs to include in the recipe or pouring water into a measuring jug at the right quantity.  Reading recipes together also helps children learn new words, promoting new vocabulary and literacy skills.

• Opportunity to explore different foods – Our Aspire centres provide nutritious meals that include food groups that children may not have tried before. Allowing children to help cook, opens them up to different foods and flavours. This encourages children to try new ingredients and tastes that they may not at home.  

• Following directions – Learning to listen and follow instructions are important life skills. When children learn to cook, they must follow the verbal instructions that are given by our centre chefs and educators who are following the recipe. Whether the children are reading the recipes or are drawing the steps on paper, this process gives them the opportunity to follow directions and carefully listen to others.  

• Explores their senses – Cooking also helps young children explore with their senses. Completing activities like mixing ingredients together in a bowl, rolling dough and watching it rise, smelling different flavours of the food once its cooked, all build on the children’s difference senses of touch, sight, and smell.

• Promotes Health and Hygiene – Hands on meal preparation provides a great opportunity to discuss with children about food and the different kinds of nutrients in them. This provides children a greater understanding of what food to eat to keep their body thriving and healthy. Meal preparation and cleaning up after themselves, also teaches children about hygiene. They learn what certain food to wash, and how to wash their hands properly, before they cook, during and after.

Cooking Fun at Aspire Tarneit North

At Aspire Tarneit North centre, they understand the importance of giving children the opportunity to participate in different cooking experiences. Recently, the Toddler children in Jasper room enjoyed a wonderful cooking experience with educators making delicious coconut balls. Tarneit educator Gurleen spoke about hygiene and healthy eating ensuring children’s hands were nice and clean before engaging in making the coconut balls together.

Tarneit North Nursery children also participated in some cooking with a fun baking experience. The nursery children loved mixing, pouring and watching how we can create and cook delicious foods with the supervision and help of our educators. It looks like we could even have some inspiring young cooking chefs on our hands!

Allowing the children to participate in the cooking themselves provides them with the early concepts of maths and science skills, literacy and hand eye coordination. Being able to master new skills also fosters their independence and boosts their confidence.   

Aspire Tarneit North also provides recipe cards for families that they can take home with different recipes that the centre chef cooks for the children. These are available at the front of the kitchen and are greatly appreciated by families, especially when the children can’t stop talking about one of the yummy meals they’ve had!

Cooking and learning about nutrition are a key part of instilling healthy habits in the children in our care. If you want to learn more about what is offered in our programs at Aspire Tarneit North, book a tour of the centre today!