Nearly every cooking action involves using the small muscles in the hand as well as refining hand-eye coordination. Whether using a knife to cut celery, a peeler to scrape carrots, a huller to clean strawberries, a colander to drain noodles, or an eggbeater to beat eggs, children are constantly refining their fine-motor skills.
Most importantly, as they cook, children are developing these skills in a natural way. When teachers involve children in cooking activities and show them how to manipulate cooking tools, children will be much more likely to pick up a pizza cutter or a melon baller and use it as part of a cooking activity on their own. As they knead, spread, and cut, children develop the hand strength and coordination that they will also put to use in writing, drawing, and various skills.
Today the All Star Lunch "Bunchers" made pizza dough from scratch. The children really enjoyed measuring out the ingredients, stirring, and best of all kneading the dough! Tomorrow we will have the opportunity to roll out the dough and create our own mini pizza to take home!
The long term nature of this project was really interesting. Spreading the steps out over a few days gave the kids more time to really get involved in each component of the process rather than rushing through it to get to the end. At home we all need to get food on the table so there is rarely time for this sort of real engagement with the process.
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