• What is a recipe?
• Why do we need a recipe?
• What kind of recipes should we follow?
• Does your family have any special recipes or traditions for food?

Morning Meeting / Circle Time:

• Review last week and invite kids to share anything they want about their weekends.
• Introduce what you'll be focused on this week: recipes
• See if anyone knows what a recipe is, why we need one, and where to find them.
• Read a book (ex: How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman)

Free Play:

• Add cook books or magazines to kitchen dramatic play
• Play dough with cooking utensils
• Water play "potion" or "recipe" mixing
• Sand play with pots, pans, utensils

Morning Meeting / Circle Time:

• Create a Rebus Recipe (a recipe that combines pictures and words to make it easy for pre-readers to follow) for something you can make for morning snack
• Ideas for simple snack recipes: scrambled eggs, oatmeal, muffins, yogurt parfaits
• Ahead of circle print out images to represent the recipe you are following. Follow the recipe at circle and invite kids to help with each step of the way.
• Here is a sample Rebus recipe for Scrambled Eggs

Free Play:

• Kitchen dramatic play (you will likely keep this as an option every day, just pay attention to how the play changes over time and introduce new materials to enhance the play)
• Play dough with cooking utensils
• Water play "potion" or "recipe" mixing
• Sand play with pots, pans, utensils
• Clipboards with paper and markers for kids that want to write their own recipes; this could also be added to the kitchen dramatic play

Snack Time:

• Eat recipe you made during circle time. Talk about how the food is different now. What did cooking do to it?

Morning Meeting / Circle Time:

• Introduce knife safety. Ask kids what they know about knives and review safety. Why do we use a cutting board?
• Some foods we don't need to cook to eat, we just need to cut parts of the food off. Bring a mix of fruits and vegetables to circle (example: apple, orange, pineapple, mango, avocado).
• Invite kids to guess how they need to be cut so you can eat them. Can they guess what the inside looks like?
• Cut up the fruit and vegetables to serve at snack. If you have kid-friendly knives you can invite them to help you cut up softer foods like bananas or strawberries. As you cut, talk about how foods look different on the insides.
  • Other possible conversations: why some foods have protective layers (oranges, pineapple); how the foods grow
• Read a book (ex: Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert)

Free Play:

• Play dough with knives or other cutting implements
• Water play "potion" or "recipe" mixing
• Sand play with pots, pans, utensils
• Snack-cutting station (invite your kids to prep snack for later!)

Snack Time:

• Eat the foods you cut together during circle.

Morning Meeting / Circle Time:

• Revisit cooking utensils, and introduce the blender.
  • What does a blender do? What other cooking utensil is it similar to?
  • Invite your kids to look closely at the blender. What do you notice? What parts does it have? How is it going to change our food? What should be put in it?
• Make fruit smoothies (optional to create a Rebus recipe for this as well, or you can explain that there are some foods that don't need a specific recipe). Add one type of fruit at a time to watch how the colors change. Here is one example of a fruit smoothie recipe.
• Read a book (ex: Fruit Bowl by Mark Hoffman)

Free Play:

• Play dough with cutting utensils (knives or other)
• Water play "potion" or "recipe" mixing using food coloring
• Sand play with pots, pans, utensils
• Fruit stamping-- cut fruits in half and invite kids to dip them in paint before stamping them on paper. Compare how the fruits are different.

Snack Time:

• Drink the fruit smoothies at snack

Morning Meeting / Circle Time:

• If we're going to be eating lots of new foods we should think about how to set the table.
• Invite kids to help you figure out how to set the table (where does the plate go? where does the cup go? where does the fork go? etc.)
• Read a book (ex: The Table Sets Itself by Ben Clanton)

Free Play:

• Table setting activity-- put out cups, plates, silverware, napkins, etc. and invite kids to practice setting the table
• Decorate placemats-- invite kids to decorate large pieces of paper with the materials of your choosing. Laminate them or cover them with contact paper to turn them into place mats for them to use at meal times.