by Danielle Ziegler

Thanksgiving is almost upon us!  If you celebrate, you may be getting ready to prepare a feast later this week. If your kids are anything like mine, they’re excited to help as well.  But why wait for a holiday to cook together? Besides being fun, kids can learn lots from cooking, from reading to science to different cultures.

Reading recipes is a great way to get reading practice. Cookbooks may also help with kids’ vocabulary. Many times, as in “Star Wars: The Padawan Cookbook” by Jenn Fujikawa, there’s a section that explains different cooking tools and concepts.  This particular cookbook also has many sidebars to read with fun facts about the foods being used. Another cookbook that can lead to reading is “Fairy Tale Feasts” by Jane Yolen and Heidi E.Y. Stemple. It’s a collection of fairy tales with corresponding recipes. You can read Cinderella together and then make pumpkin tartlets.

Cooking together and talking about how food changes after cooking is a great start to learning about science in the kitchen. “Look, I’m a Cook” has wonderful scientific explanations throughout. For example, it explains how yeast works in the bread recipe. This is a great book for preschoolers and their parents!

Another book that has direct science in it is “Waffles + Mochi: Get Cooking!” Throughout the book, it has different opportunities for young chefs to “Try It!” Readers can explore their taste buds and how they react to different flavors. You can event learn about pickling or how to grow a potato!

Cooking is also a great way to start to explore other cultures. Try “Cooking Class: Global Feast” by Deanna F. Cook for recipes from all over the world. There are wonderful photographic sections where they show, for example, the breads of the world.  Another fantastic cookbook to pick up is “Gaby’s Latin American Kitchen” by Gaby Melian, which focuses on Latin America. This is an especially wonderful book for geography lovers, as it has great maps!

One last thing to remember is that cooking together is fun! You could make a family tradition of cooking a new recipe together once a month.  That will even help the picky eaters of the bunch (both children and adults) because food always tastes more delicious when you’ve helped make it! Take a look at the cookbooks in the youth section of the Ames Public Library for more ideas.