Teaching Creatively - Homeschooling in the Kitchen

At the risk of repeating myself, homeschooling is all about flexibility and innovation, taking advantage of any opportunity to learn and to grow in our understanding of life and everything around it.

With that in mind the kitchen is great a place for learning life skills and practice other kind of theoretical knowledge.

How does this work in our homeschool?

Here are a few things I do with the kids:

• I try to have them help me, as much as they can and are willing, in cooking and baking. This is a great way for them to practice Math skills such as measuring and fractions to name a couple.
• I involve them at the store in computing amounts. This is good practice in arithmetic, rounding and estimating.
• Most of our science experiments are done in the kitchen.
• When the kids were younger, helping me bake was helping improving their reading skills as I would ask them to tell me what the next step on the recipe.

The reason why the kitchen can be such a great place for learning is that beyond all the academics that can be done there (especially Math), the kitchen is is an ideal setting for the kids to learn and practice team work and hard work. It is also conducive to art and creativity.

All in all, the kitchen is an integral part of homeschooling as a place where discovery and practice are done, and where valuable life skills are learned. I know often time my tendency is to keep them out of the kitchen because of the mess that often incurs after they have been there, or the damages and mistakes that can be done, but I know that I need to resist this tendency as I would be hurting themselves and myself long run (they won't be equipped to help or cook for themselves), and deprive them from valuable experiences and learning opportunities.