Once a week the children in my centre get a chance to help cook their own afternoon tea and on this particular day they had chosen pikelets. Being a mixed age centre the experience is offered to any interested children regardless of ability. There is a selection of easy hands on recipes to make their choice from and our life not too hard. This week it was my turn to facilitate the cooking and I always find the mother coming out in me when its around hot equipment and had to remind myself to allow the children a supported opportunity to flip the pikelets over. Te Whāriki states “Children develop confidence that they can participate and take risks without fear of harm” (Ministry of education 1996 p. 52) “Educators in early childhood are to scaffold children’s learning in this area we need to broaden our understanding of technology to continue to extend our own knowledge” (Smorti 1999, p.5).
There is no doubt about technology making life easier when it comes to cooking with the children. Once the eggs were broken into the bowl inclusive of a little egg shell that P managed to add, T added the sugar. They then all got to use the electric egg beater, those eggs got a good beating once eight little hands had had a turn.“It’s like marshmellow Erin”
“No it’s all fluffy like the clouds”, P corrected S.
“Why has it all changed colour?”
“Because when you were mixing it you have trapped air in the eggs and sugar and that has caused the mixture to change its appearance”.
As we added the dry ingredient and milk the children could see another change take place in texture.
Once mixed the children added spoons full of mixture to the heat and we could see another change, bubbles started to form in the mixture as it cooked, that’s when they were ready to flip them over.
So many aspects of learning occur when we cook, mathematics, the science of cooking, language and social skills all interlinking and supporting each other.
Smorti (1999) suggest that often technology is similar to the current approach to creative arts, it is the process of doing rather than the product.
