Dear Families,

Thank you for all of the feedback we have received over the past week, we had some really constructive suggestions.

We did have an overwhelming response in favour for healthy cooking experiences, but we had some concern over the two week notice period.

We propose that families will not bring in cakes from home but each room will have a cooking experience each week that the educators will pair with the children’s upcoming birthdays.

We are also excited about embedding more cooking experiences within our curriculum as the benefits for your child as Cooking Promotes Development and Learning that has been used for years as an important teaching and development tool for all ages. These benefits include:

Social-Emotional Development – Hands-on cooking activities help children develop pride and confidence in their skills and abilities. The act of following a recipe can encourage self-direction and independence, while also teaching children to follow directions and use thinking skills to problem solve.

Physical Development – Chopping, squeezing, spreading, and mixing are all cooking skills that help develop a child’s small muscle control and eye-hand coordination. It’s impossible to separate hands-on cooking activities from physical development for young children.

Cognitive Development – Cooking inspires children’s curiosity, thinking, and problem solving, offering new opportunities to make predictions and observations. Additionally, cooking offers authentic opportunities for students to understand and apply their knowledge of measuring, one-to-one correspondence, numbers, and counting. As they follow a recipe, children organize ingredients, follow a sequence, and carry out multiple directions.

 Language Development – With its own vocabulary, cooking is a great opportunity for language development. Take advantage of opportunities for children to match pictures to words and articulate questions inspired by their new experiences.