Everyone knows cooking is fun and a useful skill, but it can be educational too. We’ve suggested three ways to get more out of plain old meal prep with one of our leading 11+  tutors, Vanessa Thompsett. Vanessa is a whiz at primary maths, English and science and is here to help suggest ways of learning through the joy of cooking!

The Around the World Cooking Challenge

Creating challenges is a great way of encouraging kids to think creatively, work hard to reach a goal and learn a valuable lesson in keeping busy and making independent decisions. Help them decide the dinner menu for the week by choosing a delicacy from a different country around the world. Encourage them to research this meal, teach the family about the culture, create a list of ingredients to shop for and help to cook. If you want to make it a truly immersive experience, plan a ‘restaurant night’, decorating the eating area with a poster all about the place and culture of your meal. This activity will provide hours of fun work for the kids and can keep them thinking up new international delicacies to try. If they’re not sure where to start, encourage them to use their favourite foods as a starting point: did you know that Hawaiian pizza was invented in Canada? Or that fishfingers are 120 years old? If there’s a ‘Doctor Who’ fan in your family, perhaps you could time travel back to the nineteenth century and find out what the Victorians ate!

Make Fractions Fun and Also Tasty

With all its weights and measures, baking provides the perfect opportunity to practice working with fractions. Want to make a tasty apple pie or some scrumptious chocolate chip cookies for the whole family? Use a recipe where your children can first work out the quantities required to be sure there’s enough for everyone, multiplying and dividing as needed. By employing real life scenarios to practice maths, kids can learn from context and see how useful maths is in our daily lives – we use examples of pies so often in maths practice that it’ll be lovely to give them the opportunity of dividing a real one! You may also like to include your shopping for fractions practice: if a bag of six oranges costs £1.50, how much would two-thirds of the bag cost…?

Seasonal and Sustainable

With so many options at our constant disposal, it is easy to forget about where food comes from and how to respect seasonality. Discuss the seasons with your kids, and encourage them to learn about British farming and the changes that have been made over the decades. An almanac or seasonal calendar can be easily accessed online, and there are lots of free guides to what vegetables grow when – check out the Royal Horticultral Society for a wealth of information! During the virus many delivery services are distributing local and seasonal produce, and New Covent Garden Market has now opened up opportunities to order fresh fruit and veg directly from their suppliers. Encourage your kids to research what is in season, how it is grown, and how to create dishes using fresh, seasonal ingredients. You’ll be amazed at how well they all go together: try slicing savoy cabbage and apples thinly, cooking together with a little butter and stock, and serving as a side dish, with a rhubarb crumble for dessert! Fruit and veg are packed with all-important vitamins, minerals and fibre – challenge your kids to research all the different vitamins, and find at least one fruit or vegetable packed full of each one. Not only will your kids have a lot of fun, but they’ll also get the chance to learn about how we can look after our planet, and how to keep our bodies healthy.

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About Vanessa: Vanessa Thompsett is one of Holland Park Education’s leading tutors. With a degree in English Literature from UCL, Vanessa has been privately tutoring since 2016. She has exceptional results teaching English and Maths for 7+ through GCSE level and has helped students secure places at schools such as City of London School, Highgate, Godolphin & Latymer, and universities including Oxford, Cambridge and UCL.

Contact the team at Holland Park Education at +44 207 034 0800, or email [email protected] for more information on how to cope with Covid-19. We are here to help!