Read it and cook it! – Teach Preschool (2024)

Fun and engaging cooking experiences are a great way to expand on literacy in your preschool classroom!

If there is one thing I almost never share on this blog it is food or snack recipes. This is because cooking really and truly isn’t one of my special gifts! But that is not to say that we don’t cook in my classroom – we actually cook all the time – I just lack the confidence to blog about it. So today, I am going to step outside of my comfort zone and share with you some of the cooking activities we have been cooking up in our classroom this year along with the books we have read…

Blueberries for Sal

At the beginning of the school year, we made blueberry muffins to go with the book Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey.

Whenever we cook up a recipe like this, I just use the recipe on the box. I rarely actually cook anything totally from scratch. But the children still get to measure out the different ingredients, pour in the water, add the eggs, and stir it all up.

The Popcorn Book

To go with the book “The Popcorn Book” by Tomie dePaola, we tried to make flavored popcorn using Jello. This turned out horrible! First, we burnt the popcorn in the microwave so the entire room smelled like burnt popcorn for a week…

So we ate the popcorn that didn’t get burned and then colored the rest with powdered tempera paint…

And used the colored popcorn to make sensory bottles…

And popcorn trees…

Mouse Paint

To go with the book “Mouse Paint” by Ellen Stoll Walsh,we painted with colored icing. The children loved this activity. We added a few drops of food color to white icing and the children used the colored icing to paint their muffins…

Each child was given their own “paint pallet” to work from so they wouldn’t have to share icing or worry about passing germs around. They were also given a new paintbrush to work with. The children took their time painting their muffins and ended up using very little icing in the process. I had a ton of icing left over…

Some of the children liked mixing all their colors on the plate first and others preferred to just paint their muffins…

Elmer the Elephant

To go with the book “Elmer the Elephant” by David McKee, we made different colors of mini-muffins. I had recently bought a muffin maker and was very excited about using it in the classroom.

The children mixed up all the ingredients and then we separated the mix into small measuring cups and mixed in some food color to make different colors of mini-muffins.

We baked up our first batch of mini-muffins, poured them in my new muffin maker and they turned out wonderful.

And then the muffin maker stopped working. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it and it never did work again – it is still sitting in my garage…

Pete’s a Pizza

For the book “Pete’s a Pizza” by William Steig, each child made their own personal sized pizza.

Each child made their own pizza dough using Jiffy Pizza mix and then shaped the dough on a pizza pan…

Then the children added their own pizza sauce…

And pizza toppings…

And we baked them in the oven for about 15 minutes (or until they looked fully baked).

Our pizza crust was so thick you could just barely cut it with the pizza cutter but it tasted great and smelled wonderful.

About our Cooking

• Keep in mind that we don’t cook like this every day!
• We cook up something special about once and sometimes twice a month.
• We always wash hands before, during, and after cooking and do our very, very best to only touch our own food.
• When we are not cooking, we eat simple snacks like crackers, cheese, apples, and other food items that really are not that interesting to blog about.

More Adventures in Cooking…

We have done more cooking activities that I would like to share with you but this post was long enough for today so I hope you enjoyed our cooking activities and would love to hear what you cook up in your classroom. And if you have a children’s book you tie it to – please share that, too!

Leave your cooking comments below!

Books on Amazon

And here are links to cookbooks on Amazon that I don’t own…