Kitchen Messes = Learning
Do you remember a time when you just played around with food? Experimented for the fun of it and didn’t care what happened? I have super fond memories of first testing “recipes.” Creative “potions” which we didn’t - and you shouldn’t - eat out in the woods with my siblings and cousins. We’d make mud pies and all sorts of stews. One year we spent a lot of time making hamburgers out of shavings.
I also have good memories of trying things out in the kitchen - both as a child and as a mom. There are so many fun kitchen experiments that allow children and students to practice all sorts of skills (see “Cooking Up Fractions!” and “Food Faces” for examples).
The biggest thing we want as parents and educators is for children to have an inquiry mindset. Developing their natural curiosity is key to getting them asking questions they can apply to the world around them.
There are lots of great books out there to help foster critical and creative thinking skills and that offer connections to the kitchen. Here are a couple of my favourites!
If… A Mind-Bending New Way of Looking At Big Ideas and Numbers
Written by David J. Smith and illustrated by Steve Adams, If… A Mind-Bending New Way of Looking At Big Ideas and Numbers is all about scales. For example, “if your whole life could be shown as a jumbo pizza, divided into 12 slides” (p. 36) how many slices would be the time you spent on leisure or sleeping, or working…?
I’ve used this idea of scales in class and though students initially struggle with it, before long they are making really creative connections between the material we are learning and their own objects. One group of students once used a cupcake to explain elements of World War II. Just about any object that can be cut up or that comes in different shapes and sizes works well for this activity.
Try this out with a dozen donuts, a birthday cake, moose tracks ice cream… the possibilities are endless!
Ada Twist, Scientist
Written by Andrea Beaty and illustrated by David Roberts, Ada Twist Scientist is a fun book about asking questions. It features a female protagonist and is a great addition to a library that serves as a window for young women who are interested in science, technology, engineering, and math.
As an English Language Arts teacher, I love the way the book pulls out those famous 5W questions (who, what, where, when, and WHY!). A super memorable scene for me in the book is when Ada puts Mentos in a bunch of different coloured pop bottles at once.
We tried this experiment ourselves at home. It failed, but we now have a new challenge: figuring out the science behind how Mentos can make a rainbow out of pop. Stay tuned for our progress.
REMEMBER: Science if fun but always use caution when trying any kind of chemical reaction like this one. Wear proper eye and skin protection.
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