Our kids, both boys and girls, love the cooking rotation. Who doesn't like to eat?! We often don't use the stove or oven. It's certainly not necessary to have one in the room if there's one in the building somewhere. In another church in which I did rotation model, we conducted our class in the "big kitchen." There are a number of cooking resources out there. In addition to the ones already mentioned, there's one called "Edible Bible Lessons" (or something close to that).

This book can be found listed in the Cooking Workshop Book Resources.

Our kids love cooking as well and it fills the church with such great smells! These are the cooking workshops we have done in our first year and the first two months of this year:

pretzels - Lord's prayer
latkes - Rosh Hashana
lentil soup - Jacob and Esau
challah - Jewish traditions
palm leaf cookies - Easter (Palm Sunday focus)
seder items - Passover
bean soup packages to give away - Joseph
Joseph's Jumble pudding - Joseph - Was once available as a free lesson from the publisher Potters Workshops, they are no longer active.

Maureen

Exchange Volunteer updated source of Joseph lesson.

posted February 11, 2004

We find that our kids love the cooking rotations the best of all! What we are discovering from talking to them afterwards is that they have not made the connections between the cooking and the story. Has anyone else had this problem? How have you solved it? Is it perhaps poor delivery on the teacher's part or is the symbolism behind, say, making Lion Chow
for Daniel & the Lions, beyond them? I have taken note of Lisa, Worm Warrior's tips> What other help can people give me?

Blessings,
Hilary

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Lisa M.
Exchange Volunteer
"Mythic WoRM Warrior"

posted February 17, 2004

Hey Hilary,
It is true that children often need to have the dots connected for them -- you can't just make lion's chow and hope they figure out it has to do with Daniel. There needs to be story surrounding it.

Our general format for all lessons it to begin with some questions, delve into the story, do an activity that explains or deepens our understanding of the story, wrap it up by reviewing the story again, and then eating whatever was made.

One of the challenges with cooking is that you often have recipes that need time to cook, so you need to start right away and get things baking in the oven or chilling in the refrigerator. That works for the recipe, but it makes it harder to make the connection with the Bible story. Even when the recipe is simpler, I think the instinct is to move into preparation too soon.

If it's possible, do a simple recipe, and emphasize the need with your teachers to have opening discussion before you start cooking. If you have something that you're worried won't be done by the end of class take a page out of all those cooking shows on TV "I just happen to have a completed ___ in the refrigerator" and use that for eating together at the end of class.

We are fortunate in that we have an early and late service with Sunday School between. A woman who always attends early church teaches the class and if the recipes aren't done by the end of class, she takes them out of the oven and has them ready to hand out to the children following the second worship service. That allows them to be less concerned with finishing in the allotted time.

Hope this helps.
Peace,
Lisa