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This past fall as our gardening season came to a close, we began a super exciting program to keep our focus on the growing power of the garden. Fresh foods and vegetables became our anchor for our new program that focused on cooking, called Kitchen Creations.

It has been amazing sharing this experience with our visitors. Plus it has been fun to be able to share what we make! The experience completely echoes the idea that kids should and can help in the kitchen. Last fall, the New York Times ran an article titled Cooking With Kids: 5 Reasons You Should Be Doing It

It outlines five key points that go beyond supporting bringing kids into the cooking process; they cement the idea of participation. Facilitating the Kitchen Creations program here at the Museum, we see these play out in real-time. Their five points ring true every minute the family sits down with us during the program!

1.     Children who cook become children who taste, and sometimes eat. 

2.     Children who cook say “I can,” not “I can’t.”

3.     Cooking is a way to talk about health.

4.     Cooking is a way to talk about healthy ingredients.

5.     Cooking brings cooks of all ages closer. 

This sounds all well and good, but it takes a lot of mental and physical prep to make this happen. Cooking with kids can be like a roller coaster; it is definitely an exhilarating and fun ride! Here are a couple of tips we have figured out to help to add in that extra safety net if you are ready to take the leap. 

1.      Be patient.

2.      Be organized. If you can, help create a context. Large context: Wonder where the ingredients come from. Local/in-the-moment context: Use your senses to explore each ingredient; this makes it a game later to see if they can taste each one after they are all mixed together. 

3.      Let them use real cooking tools and model correct usage. When it comes to cutting fruit and veggies, from apples to avocados and zucchini, we have found that pre-cutting the fruit or veggie into large wedges, then having the kids use a pumpkin carving blade to cut the pieces smaller is a magic moment. 

4.      Break up a recipe into manageable steps (not easy steps—we want a challenge! We want ownership of this process!) 

5.      Don’t be worried if they don’t eat it. The whole process is a win no matter what. We are exposing children to new ingredients and flavors. Think ahead: if they are exposed to the same ingredient over and over again, familiarity breeds comfort and willingness to try.

Knowing your child’s abilities as an individual is important in helping to determine what they are capable of doing when helping in the kitchen. Our final tip is a simple guideline as to what your kids can do at different developmental stages and how you can challenge them to do more.

Preschoolers, 2-5 years, can start by learning the basic concepts that they will need to succeed in the kitchen. It is important to keep in mind that small tasks that don’t require much prep work by you will be best. These tasks can include:

Stirring

Rinsing and straining fruits and vegetables

Measuring and pouring liquid and dry ingredients

Spreading peanut butter and jelly

Mashing potatoes and cooked vegetables

Using cookie cutters

Cutting soft fruits and vegetables with child safe knives or dull butter knives. (As we mentioned earlier, after modelling correct use, we enjoy letting the kids use pumpkin carving knives.)

School-aged cooks, 6-8 years, can be helpful in not only following your verbal directions, but also helping read recipes as their reading skills develop. It is during this age period that you can allow them to begin using different appliances, such as the stove or oven, with your close supervision, as well:

Whisking eggs

Frosting and icing cupcakes and cookies

Mixing batter

Using a can opener, juicer, and garlic press

Grating cheese

Peeling fruits and vegetables

Using a hand mixe

Using small, paring knives

Boiling pasta

Making grilled cheese 

How do you invite your child chef into the kitchen? What are your favorite recipes that you like to enjoy at home?  Let us know on our Facebook page! We hope to see you at the Museum next time during Kitchen Creations, so we can create great food together! 

Kohl Children’s Museum’s Math Counts program introduces children to the wonderful world of math in a fun, informative way. We start off each program reading a book before doing fun activities together that deal with the basic building blocks of math: sets and patterns, counting, numerosity, geometry – even algebraic thinking! 

Literacy can be a great connective tool for exploring and celebrating subjects like math. While reading a book, a child may recognize the repetition of words and begin to recite the story or make predictions on what happens next - this is the child practicing patterning! Through their everyday routines, children are also using early math skills, which can be simple things like counting food, noticing shapes like a stop sign, or patterns on their clothing.

I’ve collected 10 great books and activities to introduce children to early math skills while they enjoy great stories, too! For some of the books, I’ve linked easy activities from the Museum’s At Home Zone that you can do along with the story to practice concepts introduced in each book. Welcome to the world of math thinking!

1.  A Pair of Socks by Stuart J. Murphy: Sorting can be done with anything around your home. This book is great way for children to become more familiar with sorting. Using the activity you can start simple, like sorting socks by pairs and then make it a little more complex by sorting socks by color. (At Home Zone idea!)

2.  Just How Long Can a Long String Be? by Keith Baker:  Measuring with a ruler can be complicated. This book invites children to see measurement in a non-standard method by using string.  (At Home Zone idea!)

3.  Pattern Bugs by Trudy Nicholas Harris: This is a great book to introduce children to patterning. Children will catch on to the repetition as the story is told and may guess what comes next in the pattern of words. Get your body moving and make a pattern with your body with this activity. (At Home Zone idea!)

4. Actual Size by Steve Jenkins: How big or small things are can be hard to put in perspective for young children. This book is a great introduction to spatial thinking through direct size comparison. In this story you will see images of the actual size of different animal body parts. They can see just how or small or big they are when they compare their height to other people in their home or the animal body parts in the story.  (At Home Zone idea!)

5. Dog’s Colorful Day by Emma Dodd: A great book to start counting in a fun colorful way. 

6. Five Creatures by Emily Jenkins:  Ever thought about how you could sort your family members or friends? In this story, a little girl who begins to sort her family in to different categories. This is a great book to use for sorting and dialogue for different ways to sort your family.  (At Home Zone idea!)

7. Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh: Shapes can be fun! This is a great book for children to learn new shapes while also discovering how some animals that can be made with different shapes.

8. A Pig is Big by Douglas Florian: Telling a child she is 3 feet tall may not mean as much as telling her she is as tall as a dog. This book will allow children to see “bigger” and “smaller” in different ways.

9.  Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews: Counting can be done in many different ways. This book allows children to count while exploring where black dots can be found. The activity will have children counting while exploring nature! (At Home Zone idea!)

10. Balancing Act by Ellen Stoll Walsh: Different methods can be used for measuring. This book measures the weight of animals! It is also a great way for children to see that rulers are not the only tools we use to measure things. 

And that’s not all: Here’s another great list of books that support the development of spatial skills in children, an important pre-math skill!

While doing some of these activities and reading the books, children may pick up on a different math skill or even add to the one you are already doing, like patterning and measurement combined. Try these activities and challenge your children. Adapting the activities to make them more personable allows the child to relate and be more invested in any activity. Pick one of your children’s favorite books and try to create a new math activity and put it to the test!

Remember, Math Counts takes place approximately every other Friday from 2:30 – 4 p.m. at the Museum. Check our website for the programming calendar for details. I’ll count on seeing you around!

You may have seen the words “project,” “project-based learning”, or “the Project Approach” in recent articles and news relating to education. These are current buzzwords in the education field because of the way curriculum and standards such as Common Core can be integrated into a project. Since it is used so frequently, there are many definitions and philosophies on project based learning.  

My go-to reference on the topic is Young Investigators: The Project Approach in the Early Years by Judy Harris Helm and Lilian Katz. In the book, a project is defined as an “investigation of a topic worth learning about.” The goal in the Project Approach is to find a topic in which students are highly invested. Then use children’s questions on that topic to develop an in-depth study that involves investigations, authentic activities, and observations so the children have a deeper understanding on the world around them.

The teacher takes on multiple roles in this process: facilitating and guiding the learning process by providing materials and resources (such as artifacts, books, and art supplies), bringing in experts on the topic, and going on a field site visits to answer questions posed by the children. The teacher is also there as a documenter, demonstrating the growth of the children throughout the project and showing how the children are learning, not just what they are learning.  

There are countless reasons why the Project Approach should be done in the classroom. I believe the Project Approach shapes how a child learns and naturally fosters a love of learning in a child for their whole life. Here are a just a few of the big reasons on why the Project Approach is important:

1)      Children are given a reason to practice academic skills. In the Project Approach, children are highly invested in a topic and it becomes something they WANT to learn about. When they want to learn, they will naturally want to read, write, count, and solve problems on that topic. For example, if a child is studying fire trucks and wants to know how many lights are on the fire truck, they will practice counting and then tallying the number of lights. Or if a child is trying to label something on a fire truck, they will look up how to spell and then practice writing the word down.

2)      Children develop positive dispositions towards learning. A disposition is a frequent and voluntary habit of thinking. Being curious, taking initiative, and accepting responsibility are all dispositions that can be nurtured in project work. Children are more likely to continue using these dispositions outside of the classroom if they are frequently used in the classroom. 

3)      The Project Approach enhances brain development. In the Project Approach, children develop mind brain capacity because they are using all areas of the brain. They use their senses through different experiences and authentic activities. When discussing a topic or reading a book, children connect what they are learning to what they already know based on past experiences. They analyze, hypothesize and categorize their learning. Finally, there is opportunity to practice what they learned and demonstrate their new knowledge through writing, drawing, presentations, and representations. 

4)      The Project Approach connects naturally to curriculum and standards in an authentic way that is meaningful to both the teacher, students, and administration. Topic selection from the students allows buy-in, and then with the correct teacher planning, authentic activities can easily be tied with the standards. It is important to mention that standards are being met in project work. The project gives children a connected way of achieving these markers for educational success. For example, in a spider project, the students wanted to create a museum to share all the work they had done; this relates to Common Core English Language Arts Anchor Standard that focuses on conducting research projects as a way of showing proficiency in undertaking different types of investigation. This was a totally student-directed and ingenious way that led to them making advertisement signs, display panels, sorting their work, reflecting on what they had done, and collaborating together to make the perfect museum. 

One of the reasons I love working at Kohl Children’s Museum is because of the strong belief that learning should be engaging, inquisitive, investigative, and self-directed. These key ideas are seen throughout the Museum exhibits and teacher outreach programming, including our own Early Childhood Connections flagship outreach program which brings educators, parents, and children from underserved neighborhoods together through the use of the Project Approach.

As we continue to blog I will be posting more on the Project Approach and samples of projects that have been done in our Early Childhood Connections program. 

Let’s face it, it takes a lot of empathy to share.  Even with siblings, and especially with strangers. This is part of the magic of the Museum: all kinds of kids who don’t know each other work side by side daily here and yet through cooperation and teamwork make big things happen without chaos. Do stuffed animals in the Pet Vet get treated by an impromptu team of child vets daily? Yes. Is our Whole Foods Market pretend grocery store pandemonium? No.

Setting up the environment to foster these everyday moments of empathy plays a big role. Providing opportunities of implicit “otherness” allows for curiosity and genuine wonder. What happens when a visitor is introduced to lullabies from all around the world or confronted with the word “read” in a dozen different languages?  Both these instances force dialogue and create wonder through inquiry.

As an art educator, this thought-journey about collaboration takes me back to art creation. Making art is essentially about making a place: temporary, in the moment, imaginary, or celebrated over time as a prized masterpiece. It is a place made possible by becoming engrossed in the making.

What better way to confront community and empathy by opening up this art place to another person? Working collaboratively forces us to navigate encounters with another person.

It can be messy trying to negotiate working that closely, in general. That is why I like collaborative projects so much. Even though the fright of making art with another person looms large, when a single goal is announced, it somehow becomes much easier.

This is not to say that art is the great equalizer, because that would be selling the process short. Contradiction and conflict are mainstays of artmaking: they are just called juxtaposition and sublimation. Freud famously reminds us that learning requires frustration. That is exactly what purposeful artmaking does by confronting the maker with a controllable amount of frustration, and the support of an adult when needed. Collaborative projects can happen in a frenzy of activity (like painting a cardboard deer sculpture) or become quiet and contemplative by trying to weave fabric into a large loom made out of construction fencing. The materials are simple for both: cardboard and paint or recycled construction fencing and upcycled fabric. The thing to shoot for in collaborations is to provide space for all participating, so the scale of both projects are larger-than-child-scale.

So be brave and introduce collaboration to your learning environment. In fact, it might already be happening implicitly. Here are a few tips that could help you dive into the messy world of collaboration or strengthen your collaborative moments:

1.      Set boundaries: think about the good questions and help a discussion happen about sharing/working with each other.  “How can things be changed? How do we respect other people’s art? What are the ground rules for painting in close proximity with each other?” (Trust me, this will help minimize chances—or at least provide a future framework—for the inevitable paint splattering on a neighbor or her contribution to the work.)

2.      Create an area that can grow through individual additions. I call this process an accumulative collaborative project. The scale grows with each addition, and the growing work shows how each part both adds and responds to the overall work. This is great, because each person’s addition remains unique and authentic, but is influenced by the close proximity to other work. The visual dialogue becomes so rich! Also, by creating a project that will allow for all members to initially add something independently is especially good for groups new to the collaborative environment. It acts as a confidence booster, and a way of introductions.

3.      Allow the participants to add to the project, or you can sneakily add their work yourself. In the cardboard structure above, I created the area through gluing and stacking open boxes to create nooks for participants to add and transform. For the wall work below, I slowly added projects that had been left behind in the art studio. This has evolved into a wall of houses, even inspiring a visitor to think about bird houses and adding a chalk drawing with a bird and tree nested into the cardboard sculptures.

4.      Set a project and allow it to change over time. As an educator, you have to set the stage. It isn’t taboo to have an end goal, but keep that to yourself. This goes back to the tip about setting up boundaries for art behavior. You can set initial boundaries with what materials are offered, the original space set aside for the project, or the duration of the project. My limitation for both projects above: the primary inspiration and base material was cardboard. When it comes to collaboration, keep it simple. It is always surprising to see where the project goes.  

5.      Okay, now you are a seasoned collaborator. How about co-planning the project? Listen to your participants: What are they interested in? You can build collaboration into your teaching tools. Child-centered learning is all about collaboration. Do they really love spiders? Okay, do your research: map out possibilities for yourself, then discuss what most excites them. For instance, will they be making a collaborative web sculpture or will they want to focus on making the spider ecosystem? Maybe they love the spiders, and want to figure out what materials to use to make spider sculptures. To follow the pun, be the fly on the wall. Not only that, be the very educated fly on the wall, and be able to help or answer questions when they arise.

Just remember, negotiation, respect, compromise and cooperation become concepts understood through the actual process of planning and making and are concretely represented by the finished project. As an adult facilitating collaboration, be calm, set boundaries, listen to the group needs, then become part of the process.

Here is a link of some of the collaborative projects that have been undertaken in the Museum’s Art Studio over the past year!

Don’t be afraid to get messy! In the end, the outcome is always a surprise and a result of many hands working together.

Okay, as promised, I will now tackle answering the issue that I posed in a previous post: Why is tinkering important for young children, and just what does it look like, anyway?

I came across a great book: Tinkerlab, A Hands-on Guide for Little Inventors by Rachelle Doorley. She approaches the idea of tinkering with young children with this philosophy: “At its core, tinkering begins with this kind of problem solving and curiosity about how something works. When children are encouraged to solve problems on their own, they learn a great deal through the questions and hands-on experiments…”

The first thing that we have to realize is that children need to repeat new ideas over and over to be able to create a true understanding of a concept. So the key term that, I will happily take from Rachelle Doorley, and I can’t stress enough when tinkering with young children is “invitation.”

Invite them to explore, take apart, re-create, then repeat.

(Tinkering with textures in Adventures in Art: Rootmaking with Paper)

Keep it simple; then build up. There is a reason why in a Montessori classroom options are limited at the beginning of the school year and build in complexity as the year progresses. In the Teaching Artistic Behavior/Choice-based studio model you open one area of making at a time, giving the child the chance to focus attention and learning correct usage of each material independent of the next. Once initial understanding is grounded, then new ideas and approaches can be explored.

It is about fostering an environment that allows for curiosity and promotes questioning. More importantly, it is about giving the child the chance to work with materials with their hands, and their own ideas. Tinkering is creativity. It isn’t hard to gear the process of tinkering to younger kids; they all are innately problem solvers. Tinkering is social, too. Kids like to see other kids working, ideas are contagious, and ideas resonate side-by-side. Tinkering is the perfect opportunity to work alongside your child. You don’t have to have all the answers, just be comfortable with experimentation, questions, and unexpected outcomes.

Framing any project as a question is key. Instead of just setting out paint, ask, “I wonder what happens when we mix two colors?” Ask the child what two colors to start with, and run with the questions that the child volleys back at you. You can even ask, “What else can we use for paint? Can we paint with dirt?  What happens when we add things to the paint, like salt? What does it look like when we use something else besides a brush?”

Question, question, question.

Questions yield experimentation.

Experiments require repetition.

Repetition breeds variation.

Anything can open up as a tinkering activity.

One last thing, be comfortable with failure. Trust me, failing is good. Tinkerers call it getting stuck. You do it already. How often when doing “grown-up work” have you needed to go for a walk, pick up a crossword puzzle, or sit and doodle? Failure is not an endpoint, you just don’t have the answer yet. That is why repetition is key.

We have a great resource that is ever-changing on our website, called the At Home Zone. The projects run the gamut of simple provocations of materials to more extensive experiments. These are great way of beginning a tinkering exploration. All the At Home Zone activities are designed to keep the fun and learning going with a selection of great STEAM-related (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Design, Mathematics) discoveries that are all designed to jump-start your imagination and creativity.

Have fun. It is an amazing process. Go with it.

From May through October, the Museum is lucky to have several Master Gardeners from the University of Illinois Extension Master Gardener Program. They specialize in teaching about sustainable food supply practices through hands-on planting, maintaining, and harvesting of fruit and vegetable gardens. Through this partnership, we are able to continuously plant and harvest throughout these months. 

Steve Cook, our main Master Gardener, has been with our Garden Buddies program for the past 2 ½ years. He is an incredible resource from both the wealth of knowledge he brings to the actual plants and seeds he brings to our garden.  During our growing season, he is here every Friday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Not only has he helped to make this program a summer staple, he has gone to great lengths to create a healthy foundation for our garden to expand. This year we added two more raised garden beds bringing our working total to six raised garden beds and we are hoping to add even more in 2016.

When I asked Steve what he hoped participants would gain from being part of our Garden Buddies program, he replied, “To show kids where the vegetables come from… [and] to get kids interested in gardening and sometimes a parent may become interested too.”  

It is really fascinating to watch children come back week after week to the garden to see how it has changed and grown. Not surprisingly, recent studies have even shown that participating in garden-based learning positively impacts the child’s overall academic success. Steve highlights our visitors’ enthusiasm, remarking that “The kids have planted everything. Many kids come back to see how it’s growing and harvest what they have planted.”

One of my favorite stories was told to me by one of the exhibit guides in Habitat Park. Apparently, a little girl had pulled a leaf off one of the plants in the garden bed and began to eat it. The mother exclaimed, “What are you doing?” The little girl replied, “Eating swiss chard!” She was correct - and obviously a repeat Garden Buddies patron.

Steve is a great resource for parents as well. He is happy to answer any questions about gardening and help a patron figure out how to make things work in their own garden or start one! He happily reminds us, “Kids like to be outside and play in the dirt and this gives them a chance.”

In our garden you can explore using all of your senses. Steve is encourages our patrons to smell and taste herbs from our garden. Children have fun identifying what we have grown, especially when it comes to our herb garden. Not only do children taste the herbs but they explore ways to identify an herb from its characteristics: what it looks, smells and feels like. By turning it into a game, Steve will ask children if they like pizza or spaghetti sauce, like in these pictures, and as a result the little girl figured out this herb was on her pizza!

All of our fruits and vegetables are grown organically. This year our crop has been abundant! We are proud of our long list that we have been able to cultivate from our small raised garden beds: growing beans, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, head lettuce, cabbage, beets, radishes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, Swiss chard, zucchini, garlic, onions, celery, leeks, strawberries, peas, and herbs (parsley, chives, thyme, oregano, dill, cilantro, lemon basil, basil, sage and stevia). Our biggest grow of the year? Pumpkins! Next year we hope to have even more pumpkins of various sizes.

In season, there is always something growing in our garden, as fruits and vegetables get harvested, space becomes available to plant more seeds! Many children return both to plant more seeds and also to see how the vegetables they planted are growing. Steve said, “They are very excited and know exactly where to look for which vegetables they planted.” Steve also enjoys asking children what their favorite vegetable is and then showing them how it grows. This enables many children to be able to see the life cycle of the plant. And what better way to get a child interested in eating vegetables, then to have them take ownership of planting and growing the vegetable!  This echoes another recent study by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

I asked Steve what he thought was the best way to engage children in the garden. He told me, “Let them do it, you can’t mess things up.” So go for it, play around with gardening! If you want some help getting started, we are still working with our garden!  

In October, we will explore “Amazing Seeds,” discovering what is inside a seed and how seeds get from one place to another. And don’t forget we will still be planting, maintaining and harvesting the plants for the rest of our growing season. If you find yourself at the Museum on a Friday but the weather keeps you out of Habitat Park, you will find Steve inside with our worm bin. Children have the opportunity to touch the worms, learn about worms and their importance to gardens and the food we eat.  

We still have one month left to garden together. Come see us in Habitat Park. As the weather turns more autumnal, we will be adding an exciting indoor extension: a Garden to Table cooking program every other Tuesday afternoon. In October, we’ll be making colorful carrot salads: beautiful AND healthy! Stay tuned!

--Gail Schuck, Museum Education Specialist