Lead Creative Schools Scheme

At the start of the year, I worked with a wonderful group of year 5 students at a Welsh primary school in Cardiff called Ysgol y Wern.  The project formed part of the Arts Council of Wales’ Lead Creative Schools Scheme, and my task was to help improve numeracy skills through cooking.

I worked at the school for 2 days a week over a period of around 8 weeks, and after a few visits playing games with the children to get to know the class, we started to create the project together.  As a group, we decided to cook street food from around the World, travelling to a different country each week and cooking some easy yet tasty dishes with the children.

The project was a huge success, and I was very sad to see the project come to an end – although I’m very proud of the work that we did and how the children grew in confidence with their cooking and numeracy.

I feel that so much can be taught through cooking and believe that it should form an integral part of the curriculum; with subjects like science, geography, numeracy, literacy, history as well as the most obvious cooking skills all being covered in one activity.

Cooking with children doesn’t have to be just baking sweet cookies and cakes – get children involved by asking them to research recipes that they would like to cook, give them tasks to do like weighing and measuring, chopping ingredients as well as tasting.  Getting children involved with food preparation from a young age will help widen their tastes and build a healthy relationship with food.

With this in mind, I will over the course of the Summer Holidays share the recipes that I did with the children in the hope that it will inspire more children to cook and learn through cooking.  Parents – don’t be a control freak, let the kids do as much as they can….there will be some mess, but get them involved to tidy up too.

If you make any of the recipes, then be sure to tag me on social media using my handle and the hashtag #SummerCookingSeries.  Let the fun begin!!

For further information on the Arts Council’s Lead Creative Schools Scheme, please click the following link:

http://www.arts.wales/arts-in-wales/creative-learning/the-lead-creative-schools-scheme