Kids in the Kitchen
Why teach children to cook?
Children need practical skill development in preparing healthy food and often what little cooking children have done in the past has been around preparing high fat and sugar treats. This cooking program, based on the Western Australian “Kids in the Kitchen” program, encourages children to prepare their own fruit and vegetable meals and snacks. Recipes are printed for children so that they can make the dishes at home for parents and friends and the cookbook is available for parents to purchase.
The cooking program has been the Tooty Fruity Vegie activity most enjoyed by children. It has enabled many children who are unused to excelling in academic work to take a lead in learning these practical skills. In one school with a worrying number of children not attending, the principal was delighted to report a consistent 100% attendance rate on the days of the cooking program.
Worried about the costs of running a cooking program?
Food produced in the edible gardens can be used in the cooking program and food can be prepared for school functions or for donating to the school canteen. You can even complete the cycle by recycling kitchen waste to the school compost or work farm for use on the garden.
We gave small grants of $270 - $750 per year to our schools to purchase basic cooking equipment where it is needed and to purchase ingredients for the first few cooking programs. Once this money has been spent, schools have been resourceful in finding funds for the program to continue, such as:
- Children preparing lunch and bringing along a gold coin donation
- P and C’s donating some of the fundraising money for the program
- Some schools use funds from disadvantaged schools programs
- Donations from local food stores
- Sponsorship from local companies in exchange for free advertising in the school newsletter
- Fundraising events such as healthy cake stalls using food produced in the cooking program
- Sales of a school healthy food cookbook
- Sales of worms and worm juice from a school worm farm.
The cooking program is mostly run by parent volunteers who attend a half-day training session run by the local nutritionist. We’ve also trained some child carers who co-ordinate out of hours and vacation child care programs for primary school children and want to run healthy cooking programs as part of their work. The parent training notes are included. As an added incentive we give each parent who comes to the training a free apron, cookbook and notes. As part of the half-day workshop, parents prepare some of the dishes from kids in the kitchen cookbook for lunch. We suggest for a group of 15 participants that you make:
 | 1 x potato pancakes 1 x easy vegie slice 2 x crunchy lettuce parcels 8 mini pizzas (half each) 8 x vegetables parcels (i.e. 16 parcels) 4 x tangy melon salad |
Recipes for the program largely come from the fabulous Kids in the Kitchen cookbook produced by WA Health. The cookbook also comes with a recommended teaching manual and video and this entire kit can be purchased from the Child Development Foundation in SA www.chdf.org.au.
Use of Volunteers
Most volunteers are parents though we have had the odd grandparent assist, too.
A recent UK study into the effectiveness of healthy eating programs has shown that parent involvement is a feature of many of the more effective school interventions. Most of our parent volunteers reported that the cooking program was the activity they most enjoyed. Volunteers are recruited via the school newsletter, at TFV parent events or by word of mouth. Most schools insist that volunteers agree to have a criminal record check before working with children. Our research indicates that volunteering for TFV activities may have increased parent’s motivation and confidence to advocate for more fruits and vegetables at home, at school and in other settings.
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