BJU Press Blog

Guest Writer

Cooking Classes with Kids

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cooking classes with kids
Kids can be notoriously picky when it comes to new foods, but when you involve them in the cooking process, suddenly the dish has more appeal! Plus, cooking with your kids helps them build valuable life skills. They won’t always have you there to cook healthy meals for them, so they need to know how to assemble and prepare food on their own. Check out these easy recipes and cooking tasks that you can do with all your kids as part of your homeschool.

Food Safety Basics Class

Food-borne illness is a serious matter. It’s never too early to start educating your kids about the safe way to handle food in the kitchen. You could start with a demonstration about germs and how they spread, using a Glo Germ Powder Kit or a similar experiment. After showing them how germs are transferred, have your kids practice handling raw meat or fish, then washing their hands thoroughly. Teach them to sanitize counters, to use separate cutting boards for items like vegetables and raw meat, and to wash their hands after using raw eggs in a recipe. Talk about safe temperatures for different foods and about washing a knife or dish after it has come in contact with raw food.

Cooking Essentials Classes

Do your kids know how to crack an egg? Can they boil pasta, peel a potato, measure flour accurately, snap beans, or cut up vegetables? Make a list of essential skills that you want your kids to learn, and create mini cooking classes for your homeschool. One mini cooking class could cover all the different ways to prepare a particular vegetable, such as potatoes or carrots. Another class might focus on dexterity-related kitchen skills, such as cracking eggs, chopping onions, or flipping pancakes.

French Bread Pizza Class

Remember to keep the cooking classes tasty and enjoyable for the toddler set as well. These French bread pizzas are fun to make, and they’re the perfect size for little kids to handle. Even the smallest children can spread sauce on crusty bread, and they’ll be delighted to choose their own veggies, meats, and cheeses for topping the pizzas. After eight to ten minutes in the oven at 375 degrees, the delicious personalized pizzas will be ready for the table.

Dinner Series

If you have older kids who have already mastered the basic skills, you can work on more advanced meal preparation. Make a list of five to ten simple dinners, and then create an instruction sheet for each meal, complete with ingredients, recipes, and instructions. Each week, help your older kids make one of those dinners. When they’ve gone through the entire set of meals, they have a final test—to choose one of the meals and create it again, this time on their own without any help.

Doing mini cooking classes with kids might be frustrating and messy at first, but if you persevere, you’ll have the joy of knowing that your kids can handle food safely and skillfully. It’s well worth the effort—and you might find that you love having a couple of little sous-chefs in the kitchen!

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Rebecca is a work-at-home freelance writer, novelist, wife, and the mom of two bright-eyed little ones. She credits her success in writing and her love of books to her own mom, who homeschooled three kids from pre-K through high school.

The High Calling of Motherhood

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motherhood
Two words come to my mind when I think of motherhood—servanthood and sacrifice—because the truth is that we can’t be the moms God wants us to be without either one of these. In fact, He commands all Christians to practice servanthood and sacrifice. Jesus told His disciples, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). However, there’s a big difference between serving our families and being a slave to them.

Servanthood doesn’t mean we should wait on our children hand and foot and make sure they always have everything they want. God put us, along with our husbands, over our children to be their parents—not their best friends or personal genies to grant them their every wish. But it does mean that we mothers are to willingly sacrifice our own desires in order to serve our families.

The Example

I think of my own mom and how grateful I am for her. She is a true Proverbs 31 lady who made our home a place of security, happiness, and love. She homeschooled my three older brothers and me—and lived to tell about it! She did it in a disciplined, organized, gracious, and patient manner. It wasn’t until I was in college that I began to really understand and appreciate all the work she put into our home education and just how well she prepared us for the challenges of higher education. But Mom helped prepare me for something even greater than earning a college degree—the high calling of marriage and motherhood. She not only modeled what a God-honoring wife and mother should be, she also helped me grow with biblical instruction and reproof. Those conversations served as a spiritual compass to guide me through life-changing decisions.

The Purpose

Now I’m the homeschooling mommy, and I’m more appreciative of the sacrifices my mom and dad made for our family. No doubt there are moms reading this right now who can echo this sentiment. You can relate to the unique responsibility of educating your children full-time, day in, day out. The lessons continue long after the school day ends. You are constantly switching roles as mother and teacher; and yes, it can grow wearisome at times. But you can also relate to the unique joy and fulfillment of homeschooling and agree that it’s worth the sacrifices. Because you have a higher purpose than merely grooming good children and good students: your goal should be to rear children who will grow up to love, serve, and glorify God.

We get one chance, moms. Embrace and enjoy the high calling of motherhood!

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Jennifer is a pastor’s wife and mom of two young girls and loves being able to homeschool them. During her own twelve years of homeschooling, Jennifer developed a passion for reading and writing. She earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and relishes writing during her free time.

Finishing Strong with Review Activities

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review activities for kids
The grass is green again, the air is warm, and summer is just weeks away! As you wrap up the school year, you may want to review and reinforce some of the things your kids have learned this year. Here are a few review activities to cover the material while engaging their attention and keeping it fun!

Jeopardy Review Game

With a large whiteboard and some sticky notes of various colors, you can make your own Jeopardy-style review game. You can play this with all your kids at the same time; give extra points if a child knows the answer to a question above his or her grade level! Make different Jeopardy boards for each subject. For example, the heritage studies game might include headings such as “Inventors” or “Explorers” or “Important Battles.” The kids will love saying things like, “Landforms for 200” or “Bible Heroes for 300.” Erase and refill the board with questions as many times as you like.

Candy Land Math Review

How about adding an element of review to the favorite children’s game Candy Land? Every time your child draws a card, he or she must answer a review question. If the answer is correct, the child gets to move to the corresponding colored space. If not, he or she must stay in the same spot. Double squares require two questions and two correct answers!

Multiplication with Dice

Do you have a second grader or third grader who is learning the multiplication tables? As you play a game that involves a pair of dice, require the child to multiply each number he or she rolls before continuing the turn. For example, if the child rolls a 3 and a 5, he must multiply the two numbers as well as adding them up. A game like Monopoly is excellent for review of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and other math-related concepts.

Fishing for Questions

For younger children who like to move while learning, try a fishing game. With tape or string, make a line on the floor for the children to stand behind. Cut out fish shapes from paper (a different color for each grade level) and write age-appropriate review questions on the back. Glue a large, child-safe magnet to each fish and attach another child-safe magnet to a pretend fishing line. The kids will love “fishing” for their review questions.

Jumping Review

Here’s another easy review game that involves movement. Write questions on sheets of colored construction paper—one question on each. Use painter’s tape to attach each paper to the floor with the question face down. Roll a die and have each child jump that number of colored spaces. The child must answer the question he or she lands on. You can make up your own rules for moving and winning, depending on the ages of your kids.

You’ll find more ideas for games and activities in the Teacher’s Editions of each subject in the BJU Press curriculum. Why not do one or two of these activities per week throughout the summer to keep that knowledge fresh in their minds? Have fun with review as you celebrate another successful school year!

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Rebecca is a work-at-home freelance writer, novelist, wife, and the mom of two bright-eyed little ones. She credits her success in writing and her love of books to her own mom, who homeschooled three kids from pre-K through high school.

Getting a Head Start with K4

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K4 head start
I always knew I wanted to homeschool my children, and I even knew which curriculum I would use. Having worked in the marketing department at BJU Press for three years, I had become convinced of the excellence of their materials. But there was still that nagging doubt in the back of my mind: Can I really do this? I have no idea what I’m doing! What if I mess up and my kids turn out to be ignoramuses? K4 would be my first test.

When my older daughter was four, I bought a preschool workbook and taught her from it for several minutes a day. She was catching on quickly with letters, simple words and numbers. But I felt she still might not be ready for kindergarten. So after looking online at BJU Press materials, I decided the K4 DVD program would provide a solid bridge between “pre-preschool” and K5. I thought it might also help me as a first-time homeschooler to establish a consistent routine.

Happy K4 Kid

The K4 DVD program didn’t disappoint—in fact, it exceeded my expectations. The DVDs kept my daughter interested and engaged with colorful graphics, animal characters, puppets, and fun songs. She was always eager and excited to do her daily lesson. Her teachers presented the material in a way that was easy for her to understand. I love that the program taught my daughter to listen, pay attention, and follow the teachers’ instructions. It also introduced basic but important concepts of English, reading, and math through emphasizing the alphabet and counting. Finally—and most importantly—it centered on God’s Word and incorporated its truth into every lesson.

Happy Mama

As the parent, I appreciated the fact that the program was well organized and easy to follow. I also liked the length of the DVD lessons, about sixty minutes—not too long, not too short. Using the DVDs was convenient as well; I was able to pause or rewind the program as needed. And since there were only 153 lessons, I enjoyed the flexibility of choosing how many days per week to have school.

Ready for K5

By the end of the program, I felt confident that my daughter would be ready for kindergarten the following year. She had a good grasp of the fundamentals of phonics, reading, and math. She had also developed a love for learning that helped her look forward to kindergarten with great anticipation. We had established a good, consistent school routine that helped me to plan for the next year. And I felt much more confident about this whole homeschooling thing. Kindergarten went great (I decided to stick with the DVD format); and when my younger daughter was approaching school age, there was no doubt in my mind about where to start. Using the K4 program was one of the best decisions I’ve made as a home educator, and I would highly recommend it to both new and experienced homeschoolers with preschool children.

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Jennifer is a pastor’s wife and mom of two young girls and loves being able to homeschool them. During her own twelve years of homeschooling, Jennifer developed a passion for reading and writing. She earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and relishes writing during her free time.

Attitude Affects Outcome

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good attitude in flowers
“Remember, Jennifer, attitude affects outcome.”

I don’t know how many times I heard my dad say that to me when I was growing up, but it was obviously enough times that I find myself saying it to my own children now! It was one of those many “parent sayings” that I didn’t fully understand or really want to hear as a child or teenager. Now, like so many things, it’s one that I definitely understand and appreciate. What my dad was trying to teach me is that our attitude directly impacts the outcome of everything we’re trying to accomplish—from sports to music to chores to schoolwork.

Positive Versus Negative Attitude

As a homeschool mom for the past five years, I have witnessed the truth of my dad’s statement during school. Whenever my children are excited about or good at a particular subject, they have a good attitude. They sit up, pay close attention, carefully follow instructions, and do their best. I’ll even notice them smiling as they do it. And the result is always positive whether a high grade on a test, a neat worksheet, or a thorough project.

But if it’s a subject they don’t like or understand very well, their attitude takes a nosedive. A sigh, a groan, slumped shoulders, or an audible “Not this again” is a pretty good indicator of how their lesson is going to turn out. They slouch, daydream, and make only a half-hearted attempt to follow instructions in their workbooks. Sometimes they’ll rush in order to get it over with. And the result is usually sloppy handwriting, inaccurate answers, and incomplete assignments. I’ll even see tears of frustration as they struggle through their work. Then they end up having to redo it, which makes their attitude even worse, and then I find myself starting to have a bad attitude—not an ideal atmosphere for homeschooling!

Encouraging Right Attitudes

The bottom line is that a wrong attitude reveals wrong thinking. My child thinks something like this: I really don’t like math, it’s hard, I don’t understand it, it’s boring, and I don’t want to do it. That then translates into the disposition I described earlier. My job as a teacher and parent is to help my children realize that even if they don’t like a subject, they can still choose to have a good attitude about it with God’s help. A good verse to memorize is Romans 12:11,“Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” Another one is Colossians 3:23, “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.”

I have seen God work in my children’s hearts and help them change their outlook, dramatically improving their schoolwork. Helping our kids develop Christ-honoring attitudes now in school will prepare them to handle even greater challenges in the future.

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 Jennifer is a pastor’s wife and mom of two young girls and loves being able to homeschool them. During her own twelve years of homeschooling, Jennifer developed a passion for reading and writing. She earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and relishes writing during her free time.