Lasang Pinoy 8, hosted by Iska of Edible Experiments, invites us to get our kids cooking in the kitchen!

My kids are no stranger to the kitchen, as I’m not the kind of mom who would rather have a pristine counter and a spotless sink than let my kids have their fun and some learning to go with it. Our kitchen has been witness to numerous cooking experiments… and disasters. It is rare for my kids not to peek and ask if he/she could give a hand.

Migi’s Brownies, his requested activity for our most recent mommy-son date

Cooking with children is an activity that I feel strongly about. My mom was my first cooking teacher, and she taught me the nitty gritty of food prep. To this day the most vivid memories I have of me and Mommy in the kitchen are the chicken-cutting lesson and the fish-cleaning session, both having served me well all these years. As mom to 4, I take the responsibility seriously of training my children in the life skills that will serve them long after I’m gone.

Mom, Aisa and Yena, working side by side – don’t ask what the consecration bells are doing there, I don’t know!

Being a homeschooling mom, I see innumerable benefits from having children help out with cooking and baking. Since homeschoolers aren’t that common in the food blog world , I thought I’d share with you, dear readers, how our kitchens can be the best classrooms ever designed . These are just some of the major subjects we cover in our cooking sessions:

Aisa making butternut squash ravioli

Math. My kids learned their numbers with measuring spoons and cups, helping Mom measure out the baking powder and the sugar and the salt, etc. They learn 1/2 and 1/4 quite easily. They learn estimating when I pour spices or salt into their cupped palms and ask them to “eyeball” when it equals 1 teaspoon. They learn that if you’ve got 9 spices, you’re going to need 9 jars — that’s called one-to-one correspondence! (They also learned spelling while keying in the Dymo labels.) They know that if there are 12 cookies and there are 6 of us, it’s not really fair for them to take 3 pieces the minute the cookies come out of the oven.

Aisa learning how to clean salmon heads for sinigang

Science. Our current science experiment is an exercise in delayed gratification as well. My kids and I melted some sucrose in hot water, poured it into a jar, stuck a stick in it, and now we’re watching everyday how that sucrose turns into crystals: rock candy that they’ll eventually bite into.

What better chemistry lesson than baking a cake? Little ones are amazed to see the child, born of the marriage of flour and eggs and butter and sugar, and blessed with the heat of the oven — it’s magic! Or maybe not? What ingredients go into an angel food cake versus a pound cake? What makes one lighter and the other denser? What happens to egg whites when you beat them? My 15-year-old who is doing Baking as part of her electives this year will be using several baking books, NOT textbooks (we are mostly allergic to those as well), but cookbooks written by people who bake and understand and explain the science behind the pastry. A lesson that’s learned by engaging the hands, the eyes and the brain makes a greater impact than something that’s simply read about and imagined.

Migi learning how to operate the food processor, for making yummy bean bread —
When we make bean bread, a simple explanation of where the mighty bean comes from teaches them a lesson not only in biology but also in preserving our resources and continuing to nurture our earth — that’s ecology! You’ve also got countless lessons you could do on nutrition!

Literature. A kid who has read Farmer Boy (Little House) will probably remember what Almanzo ate. A kid who has read Farmer Boy AND eaten those foods will have a better understanding of how life was like in the frontier, perhaps even learn that the author Laura Ingalls-Wilder wrote so much about the food of her husband’s childhood precisely because she had less in her own. If your children are fans of the Redwall series, have you made ‘Unny Bugs with them? Has your Lord of the Rings fanatic eaten Lembas? Or maybe they’d prefer a bite from Shakespeare’s Kitchen?

Migi kneading the bean bread dough

Religion. We try to observe the Liturgical year through food as well. How interesting it is to delve into the stories of dishes named after the saints, or talk about what Jesus might have eaten while He was here on earth (an excellent book to savor and cook from is A Biblical Feast, Foods from the Holy Land). How these dishes have been modified and interpreted in other cultures as Christianity made its way around the globe makes the discussion even more riveting. We bake bread. We drink wine. What an opportune time to talk about the Real Presence and of God’s infinite power.

Paco making Pao de Queijo balls

History. This is my favorite of all. Surprising since I was not a history geek in high school or in college. In fact, history was the subject I hated most! What could be more boring than reading 20 pages of text and memorizing the facts? How lucky are we, my kids and I, for having met homeschooling moms that told me how much fun history is at their house? The secret? Food! It is now more the norm here than the exception to cap off a history lesson or unit with a meal from the era we’re studying. From Ezekiel’s Bread of Biblical times to the War Cake of 1942, time travel becomes most enjoyable when started at the kitchen and finished off with a fluorish at the dinner table.

Yena making Pao de Queijo balls, this one from a mix

Social Studies. When’s a great time to talk about social ills, about the needy and hungry? When’s a great time to talk about what we can do as a family to help out? It is while working in the kitchen, perhaps preparing a dish for the guys at Habitat for Humanity, or baking cookies for the fund-raiser for the New Orleans disaster victims. Here’s an idea: visit Volunteer Match, put in your zipcode, and pick the Interest Area “Hunger”. You may be surprised at how many volunteer opportunities exist. A reminder to be thankful for the endless blessings we do have is not out of place here either. This may then lead into a discussion about materialism, a topic that I feel is not discussed enough in our homes, in these days of want-want-want and me-me-me.

Yena learning how to use the pasta machine, for making butternut squash ravioli (see above)

Art. Kids, is your mom, dad, auntie, uncle, grandma, grandpa or family friend a food blogger? Have you ever noticed how cooking becomes a lesson in photography? ‘Nuff said.

If you’re more into fine art, perhaps after a museum trip, you’d like to try some dishes from Monet’s Table or Van Gogh’s.

Geography and Culture. This one should be easy, but now let’s take it backwards. How do you turn a meal of codfish balls into a geography lesson? Locate Brazil and Portugal on the map and/or the globe, and read about Brazil after you form the balls and while Mom’s frying them! Make some noodles, then talk about the great cuisines of Italy and China — two countries that are thousands of miles from each other but whose cuisines have much in common. As for culture? I don’t have to remind my kids too often about where they come from. They help to spoon the bagoong to flavor the pakbet (another recipe here). They form and crumb the rolls that become pandesal. They taste it in every bite of tuyo and sinangag.

Paco and his Pao de Queijo man

Of course, academics notwithstanding, my kids also acquire so many things by working beside us and with us: there’s patience (or perhaps it’s Mom who needs to learn that lesson), there’s self-sufficiency, there’s confidence. Besides the technical knowledge, there’s also the distinct pleasure in the preparation and partaking of food together, not to mention the bonding that goes on between parent-and-child. We get to spend time with our kids, and our kids get to spend time with us. Is the term win-win such a cliche here then?

Learning, just like cooking and eating, should be a way of life. It is not something that is limited to the confines of a classroom. It is not the exclusive domain of a professional educator who holds a board license and a teaching diploma. As parents we are our kids’ first teachers, and in the kitchen we can continue to be their teachers, from the time they first learn how to count, to the age when they’re learning how to balance a chemistry equation or how to read the newspaper with a critical eye and mind, and even to the time when they’re ready to leave our cozy nest and fly.

Thank you very much to Iska for coming up with this theme — and to her Cean for that awesome graphic (sige na nga, pati kay Tito Mike)! Maybe one of these days we’ll make it a regular blogging event, and get those kids cooking often!

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PS — see how a lot of our lessons are baking or baking-related? This is another reason why I’m kinda dreading making the switch! (Is there perhaps an Ezekiel’s salad?) Lactose intolerance has been known for a while, but wheat allergies are increasing. Why? The wheels keep on turning… there’s another lesson waiting in the wings.

Edited 04/06/06: Another homeschooling mom’s perspective here.

And, my kids reminded me that I had forgotten to list Music! Time in the kitchen is always time for music appreciation as well — esp. for my 15-year old who *has* to have music in the background while she works. Often it’s Mozart or Vivaldi or Beethoven or Bach, but sometimes it’s also a chance for Mom to listen to the teenager’s recent “finds” and to share insights (Is this really music or noise? What do the words mean? This melody depresses me. What does it mean to you?). It’s what writer and fellow homeschooling mom Julie Bogart calls “engagement”. I call it “time to connect”.