The Kids Cook Monday Educators’ Toolkit OVERVIEW SM Start your week off right, make Monday family night! The Kids Cook Monday Educators’ Kit - Overview Table of Contents Introduction 3 1 Why are Family Dinners Important? 4 2 Why Cook with Kids? 4 3 Who Can Use this Kit? 5 4 Teachers College Columbia University Pilot Study 7 5 Best Practices from Our Experts 8 © The Monday Campaigns, Inc. 2 The Kids Cook Monday Educators’ Kit - Overview Introduction In the past 30 years, there has been a dramatic shift not only in what we eat, but how we eat. We’ve seen childhood obesity rates skyrocket. Family dinner has all but disappeared as more of us rely on processed snack foods, microwavables and takeout meals. Our children are no longer en- gaged with how their food gets to their plate, or connected to culinary traditions. One of the most effective ways to increase kids’ consumption of healthy foods is to get them actively involved in cooking with fruits, vegetables and whole grains. That’s why we started The Kids Cook Monday: it’s a weekly opportunity for families to share the lessons of meal preparation and nutritious eating. Research has shown that Monday prompts can help start and sustain healthy behaviors. And when Monday is family dinner night, the meal becomes a fun event, ensuring that parents and kids start the week with quality time together. The Kids Cook Monday is a non-profit public health initiative of The Monday Campaigns, in association with Columbia, Johns Hopkins and Syracuse Universities. We offer a wide variety of tools to help families cook and eat together including a toolkit for parents, weekly family-friendly recipes on TheKidsCookMonday.org and active communities on Facebook and Twitter. In our Educators’ Kit, we’ve assembled the best practices, lesson plans and kid-friendly recipes that leading child- hood nutrition and education experts use to encourage students to engage in weekly family dinners. Inside you’ll discover the benefits of letting kids help in the kitchen, learn about age-appropriate culinary tasks and get the step-by-step information you need to plan kids cooking lessons and help families start their own culinary traditions. Whether you are a teacher, chef, camp counselor or community leader, we hope that this information can help you start a Kids Cook Monday program that will keep going, both at home and in the classroom. © The Monday Campaigns, Inc. 3 The Kids Cook Monday Educators’ Kit - Overview Why are Family Dinners Important? • Research published in The American Academy of Pediatrics found that kids who have regular family dinners experience a lower incidence of obesity.1 • Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found that kids who eat family dinners get better grades in school and are less likely to try drugs or alcohol.2 • A recent data review by Rutgers University suggests that family dinners can also boost produce consumption and reduce feelings of depression in teens.3 Why Cook With Kids? • Exposure to scratch cooking, particularly at a young age, helps kids develop a taste for fresh, whole- some ingredients. • Cooking together offers the perfect opportunity to talk about nutrition and help kids understand the personal and environmental impact of their diets. • Kids are much more likely to try new foods if they have had a hand in preparing them. • Kitchen time is quality time, when parents can share family stories or ask children about their day at school or activities over the weekend. • Cooking is an invaluable life skill - starting children early leads to great competency in the kitchen. Plus kids can learn other skills like science, reading comprehension, fractions, measuring, and fine motor skills. • Teaching culinary skills can also boost children’s confidence and allows them to take pride in the meal they created. Adapted from Easy Meals to Cook with Kids by Julie Negrin © 2010 The book is available at www.JulieNegrin.com 1 Anderson, Sarah E., and Robert C. Whitaker. “Household Routines and Obesity in US Preschool Aged Children.” Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics 8 Feb. (2010). Web. 2010. 2 Califano, Joseph A., Lee C. Bollinger, Columba Bush, Kenneth I. Chenault, and Jamie L. Curtis. “The Importance of Family Dinners.” The National Center of Addition and Substance Abuse at Columbia University Sept. (2003): 1-14. Web. 2003. 3 Hsu, Christine. “Families Who Eat at the Table Are Healthiest.” Medical Daily. Rutgers University, 24 Apr. 2012. Web. 21 June 2012. © The Monday Campaigns, Inc. 4 The Kids Cook Monday Educators’ Kit - Overview Who Can Use this Kit? Each learning environment offers unique opportunities and challenges. Whether you are working with a full kitchen or hosting sessions in your local community center, The Kids Cook Monday is a simple way to get children and their parents plugged into the art of cooking. Chefs Culinary professionals are leading the way in nutrition education through their participation in programs like the Let’s Move campaign’s Chefs Move to Schools. Monday is typically a slow night in the restaurant industry, making it the perfect time to invite the next generation of young chefs into your kitchen. Children will be delighted to experience a real restaurant kitchen and pick up tips from a professional chef. Plus, preparation and clean up will be a snap compared to a bustling Saturday night! Educators Classroom cooking can support many school subjects, like health, math, history and social studies. Even if schools do not offer student access to a fully functioning kitchen, raw dishes and tasting lessons can be helpful. Encourage fam- ily participation by creating part of the meal in school and sending home instructions for the main course. Places of Worship The Kids Cook Monday is an ideal activity to follow religious services when families are together. Parents and kids can learn the basics of cooking together and be encouraged to incorporate it into their weekly routine. Classes can pass on the congregation’s traditions to their youngest members and bring extra meaning to holidays. © The Monday Campaigns, Inc. 5 The Kids Cook Monday Educators’ Kit - Overview Camp Counselors Camp offers a unique opportunity to engage students in longer activities where children can build skills over time. Let your campers show off their cooking prowess (and save some time for the staff!) by having them prepare a meal or snacks for their peers. If you are hosting a day or weekend camp, why not teach students a new culinary skill and send them home with a recipe that will help them showcase it? Parents and children alike will be proud of the new lessons they have learned! Community Organizers and Leaders Groups large and small can use The Kids Cook Monday to teach nutrition and culinary skills and it’s easy to incorporate weekly reminders or take home activities into existing programs. Use this kit to start classes in your local community center, school, or within the homes of participants. Try hosting a potluck each week with meals made at home so families can swap recipes, tell stories and share what they’ve learned together. © The Monday Campaigns, Inc. 6 The Kids Cook Monday Educators’ Kit - Overview Planting the Seeds: A Pilot at Teachers College, Columbia University In November and December of 2010, a total of 16 families gathered for a Kids Cook Monday pilot at The Center for Food and Environment at Teachers College, Columbia University. Two sets of Monday night classes were held over three consecutive weeks in Columbia’s test kitchen in New York City, with families recruited through the Harlem Health Promotion Center. The team at Teachers College, led by Executive Director Pam Koch, conducted the pilot to see if they could get families engaged in weekly cooking classes, which would in turn help parents and children partake in healthful, affordable meals at home. Each class was about two hours long and included both a nutrition education and culinary skills component, with students learning about the benefits of adding produce, whole grains and beans to their diet. After listening to guidelines on kitchen safety and hygiene, parent-child teams worked together on an appetizer, main course and healthy dessert recipe that correlated to the week’s lesson. Recipes included a Salsa Fresca, an Apple Pecan Medley, Vegetable Burritos, Black Bean Burgers, a Quinoa- based Stir Fry and a Blueberry-Spinach Smoothie. The families then gathered for a shared meal with the other participants. Response to the Kids Cook Monday pilot program was overwhelmingly positive. Parents thought the group size (7-9 families per session) and Monday night 6pm scheduling made it easy to participate. They noted that the sessions taught them more about unfamiliar foods and empowered them to try more scratch cooking at home. Parents were also surprised to discover that kids can be quite skilled in the kitchen and that meal preparation time can be used to create positive family memories. Kids who participated also reported positive effects. 73% of the children said they wanted to be involved in their family’s future meal preparations and the majority demonstrated a new willingness to try unfamiliar foods. Almost all of the families said they would be happy to participate in future Kids Cook Monday events and would gladly recommend the sessions to a friend. Overall, the pilot demonstrated that weekly family meal classes can build confidence and competency in the kitchen, as well as an interest in healthier choices for both parents and children. © The Monday Campaigns, Inc. 7 The Kids Cook Monday Educators’ Kit - Overview Meet Our Experts: We invited some of our favorite kid’s cooking teachers to share their experiences, tips and lesson plans with us.