Kids Conquer the Kitchen

With the right teacher, a kitchen can be transformed into an amazing classroom, filled with important and engaging lessons on many subjects. Measuring ingredients is an opportunity to learn math skills, such as addition, subtraction, ratios and volumes. Using a recipe involves learning how to follow instructions and complete tasks in a certain order, while remembering what steps have already been completed.

There are many physics and chemistry lessons embedded in cooking and baking processes. Time in the kitchen can also teach students the importance of cleanliness, organization, careful planning and motor skills. It also presents opportunities to learn where food comes from, appreciate the labor that goes into preparing it and learn how to not waste food.

Kitchens can be fun, exciting places for children to learn all these important lessons. However, kitchens are also dangerous, filled with many potentially harmful tools like sharp knives as well as hot surfaces. Are they really good places for kids to hang out and learn? Several kid-focused cooking schools have recently sprung up to provide children with high-quality, age-appropriate cooking lessons in safe and supportive environments.

JUST FOR KIDS

Rather than just watching adults cook, or cooking alongside adults, at these schools the kids get to jump in and do it completely themselves! Children can gain important skills and learn to be self-sufficient, all while making new friends and having a lot of fun. There are three kid-specific cooking programs in the area: Mesa Kids Cooking School in New Albany, Turnip the Beet in Louisville and Let Us Learn, in New Albany.

Mesa Kids and Turnip the Beet have kitchen spaces that have been specially designed for kids, with small tables, stools, sinks and ovens. They provide pots, pans and tools that are sized for smaller hands to make the learning process easier and safer. Let Us Learn provides safe plastic kid-sized knives for their programs; however, they mostly use regular-sized adult tools, to help children become familiar with items they would normally have at home.

Each program has different age limits. Turnip the Beet offers classes for children from 3 years old to 14 years, and they have family sessions that can include people of all ages. Mesa Kids offers classes for kids from 5 to 15 years old. Let Us Learn primarily works with fourth graders in their school programs, and with kids ages 9 and older in their farmers’ market program, but involves kids 5–17 years old.

A MULTITUDE OF LEARNING OPTIONS

Depending on the participating child’s level of interest and commitment, the programs offer a number of cooking class options, such as multi-day classes, one-time workshops and family cooking sessions. All of them offer multi-session series classes. Typically offered as an after-school option, weekend or as a summer camp, these classes allow for significant skill development. Each week’s lesson builds on the previous week’s class, and the students hone skills that they can use to make dishes or meals at home.

Turnip the Beet offers a small-group seven-week cooking or pastry lesson series that lasts for approximately 2 hours each week. Mesa Kids has similar four-week session classes in either cooking or baking, with a different theme each month. Let Us Learn works with fourth graders at two elementary schools, Fairmont Elementary and S. Ellen Jones Elementary, during the school day, throughout the year. Let Us Learn has a gardening as well as a cooking component to their programs.

In addition to classes during the school year, camps during the summer offer a more intense learning experience. Mesa Kids has a summer camp that meets Monday through Friday for a half-day session each day. The whole week of classes is focused on a particular theme. Some upcoming fun theme options include food science, candy making, cake decorating and cheese/pasta.

Turnip the Beet also offers spring break, summer break and holiday classes. Their summer camps run either a full-day or half-day for an entire week. This year’s summer offerings include a cupcake wars camp, world food, a unicorn camp and one with a superhero theme.

Learning to cook can be very empowering for kids, and they feel great pride in seeing what they are able to make. In addition to learning cooking and baking skills that they can use their whole lives, children also gain confidence that is very important in all areas of life. Kids whose parents work long hours or on the night shift might come home to an empty house. For these kids, knowing how to put a meal on the table is an essential survival skill, and one they can be rightly proud of mastering.

In addition to their multi-session classes, Mesa Kids, Turnip the Beet and Let Us Learn also offer one-time workshops that are mainly focused on fun. They have a single item they make from start to finish during a short session. A few recent offerings at Mesa include watermelon cupcakes and a taco workshop; Turnip has held pretzel, crazy cookies and sushi workshops. Mesa Kids and Turnip the Beet also offer workshops for private celebrations such as birthday parties or other special gatherings.

Let Us Learn does one-time workshops each week at the New Albany Farmers’ Market, pairing small groups of children with a chef to shop at the market and prepare a fresh, local-produce-inspired dish on-site.

Photo courtesy of Let Us Learn.

FARM TO TABLE

All of the schools try to use as many local products as possible to get the highest-quality food items while also supporting local farmers and producers. Turnip the Beet uses some produce from New Roots, an organization dedicated to bringing fresh food to underserved areas of the city. The chefs at Mesa Kids use local products as much as possible, and order ingredients through Creation Gardens, a local supplier of fresh food. Mesa Kids also sources produce and other food items from several smaller local farms such as Foxhollow and Capriole Cheese. Let Us Learn works with kids to cook at the New Albany Farmers’ Market, using food purchased directly from farmers at the market.

The programs all acknowledge that it is important for their students to learn about where their food comes from, and they include these lessons as a core component of their classes. The staff at Turnip the Beet recently started their own garden, using two plots at the Old Louisville Community Garden to engage children in growing produce that they use in their classes. They are integrating garden time and lessons into all their classes, as they feel it’s important for the kids to learn about growing food as well as preparing it. Turnip the Beet teaches kids about how to grow easy, hardy plants, in the hope they may be inspired to start a small garden or potted garden themselves.

The staff at Mesa Kids also emphasize the origins of foods as an essential part of their cooking classes. They talk with the students about farm-to-table cuisine so they understand what that means. In addition, they have started to integrate small growing projects into some of their classes. In a previous class, students grew microgreens that they harvested to use in plating their Salmon with Microgreens dish. Mesa Kids also occasionally invites visits from local farmers to teach the kids about what farm work and growing food is like. This allows the students to gain an understanding where food comes from and what it takes for farmers to provide it.

Let Us Learn incorporates farm-to-table lessons as a core element of their cooking classes. At one of the elementary schools they work with, they built a learning
garden. This gives their fourth-grade students direct experience with gardening and getting to try new food, fresh from their garden plots. When students say they think they won’t like a new food, the Let Us Learn staff encourage them to be open-minded until they have tried it. They teach the kids, instead of saying they don’t like something, to say, “I don’t like it... yet!”

Let Us Learn also works with children at the New Albany Farmers’ Market every Saturday, engaging groups of students in a cooking adventure fueled by produce purchased at the market. Local chefs guide groups of three to five children through the market, purchasing items from the vendors. They then gather in an area set up by Let Us Learn and teach the kids how to prepare the items they have purchased.

ALL KIDS ARE WELCOME

All the cooking schools strive to be inclusive, and are sensitive to being accessible for kids who have disabilities as well as to those with special diets and allergies. As long as parents let them know in advance, the schools are happy to accommodate kids as much as possible.

Mesa Kids says they are especially careful and conscientious about allergens and specific diets, and talking to kids about how to accommodate different dietary needs is built into their curriculum. Mesa also offers special needs classes for children with disabilities to provide any needed accommodations.

Let Us Learn asks about needed accommodations in their waiver form, and avoids major allergens, such as nuts, in all their classes.

Thanks to all these cooking schools and their great programs, children in the Louisville and Bluegrass areas now have a lot of quality opportunities for learning about food and how to cook!

Let Us Learn:
LetUsLearnKy.org

Turnip the Beet: 
TurnipTheBeetLou.com

Mesa Kids: 
MesaKidsCookingSchool.com

top left: Photo courtesy of Let Us Learn; top right: Photo courtesy of Turnip the Beet; bottom: Photo courtesy of Mesa Kids Cooking School

ADULT COOKING SCHOOLS THAT OFFER OCCASIONAL KIDS' CLASSES
 

• Cooking at the Cottage (Louisville) has some classes specifically for children ages 7 to 12 years old. 
  cookingatthecottage.com/site
• Cooking at Millie’s (Louisville) doesn’t offer classes specifically for children, but allows children to attend with a parent’s permission; there is no set minimum age.
  wildthymecooking.com
• Lexington Pasta (Lexington) allows children 10 years and older to join adult classes to learn how to make pasta.
  lexingtonpasta.com/pasta-classes
• Wild Thyme (Lexington) offers kid-specific classes, in a kitchen designed for children, ages 3 to 14. Children 14 and up can take classes for adults after completing an introductory course. 
  wildthymecooking.com