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Discovering Kitchen Chemistry

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When was the last time you experimented in a chemistry lab? Was it in high school? College? Or maybe it was this morning in your very own home.

Every family has its own personal chemistry lab and it's usually the most popular room in the house. The trouble is, many of us don't realize what we're doing every day – when we toast bread, bake brownies, or pop popcorn – is chemistry.

In their book The Science Chef: 100 Fun Food Experiments and Recipes for Kids, Joan D'Amico and Karen Eich Drummond make kitchen chemistry fun for the whole family. Pairing kids and food, says D'Amico, "makes the learning very fun and very kinesthetic and very tactile. There's instant gratification, you can fix most mistakes, and there's a lot of reward." As a learning specialist, D'Amico knows the most effective lessons include hands-on activities that stimulate as many senses as possible, making cooking an ideal teaching tool.

D'Amico, who has also co-authored children's cookbooks focusing on math, history, geography, and other core subjects, is a firm believer in using the kitchen as a classroom. Not only can you help your kids learn important concepts through entertaining and engaging cooking activities, you might just get them to make dinner once in a while, too!

Here's a taste of what you and your kids can whip up in your own kitchen classroom:

Cooking Up Chemistry: In each chapter of The Science Chef, D'Amico and Drummond address a food-related science question with simple explanations and hands-on experiments. They follow the science lesson with recipes and a few interesting facts about the featured food. You'll find out, for example, why popcorn pops, why bread rises, why sauces thicken, and why toast browns. The book is easy to follow, the foods familiar, the questions intriguing, and the experiments appropriate for kids of all ages.

Edible Equations: In The Math Chef: Over 60 Math Activities and Recipes for Kids, D'Amico and Drummond show how cooking strengthens math skills as well. Following a recipe is a great way to learn about measurement and equivalencies. Comparing various baking pans can offer a lesson in figuring volume, and baking a giant cookie is a tasty way to practice calculating circumference, radius and diameter. Kids can practice estimation skills with recipes that don't need to be exact, and they can get real world experience with multiplication and fractions when doubling, tripling or halving a recipe.

Other Scrumptious Math and Science Skills: Any time you cook with kids, you're introducing and/or reinforcing skills they'll need to succed in math and science. From following directions to conducting research to predicting outcomes, you can turn practically every cooking experience into an educational adventure. Ask questions like "What do you think will happen if we change this ingredient?", then find out if your predictions are correct. If you're missing an ingredient for a recipe, go online or check out a basic cookbook to find an appropriate substitute. Help kids learn about budgets by asking them to plan and shop for a week's worth of meals given a set amount of money.

On Beyond Science: D'Amico and Drummond are so enamored with cooking as a teaching tool they collaborated on several other books as well. The U.S. History Cookbook: Delicious Recipes and Exciting Events from the Past takes us from the first Thanksgiving to modern times decade by decade, featuring popular foods as a way to bring history to life. The United States Cookbook: Fabulous Foods and Fascinating Facts From All 50 States is a delectable introduction to our nation's finest, and both The Science Chef Travels Around the World: Fun Food Experiments and Recipes for Kids and The Coming to America Cookbook: Delicious Recipes and Fascinating Stories from America's Many Cultures offer tasty lessons in global cultures and cuisines. You can cook up similar lessons at home by talking about early cooking techniques ("What if we didn't have a refrigerator?" or "What if we had to cook over an open flame?"), and by learning about the origins of your favorite foods ("Where was the first pizza made?" or "What does the word 'quesadilla' mean?"). You can even personalize the lessons by exploring your own family's history using recipes handed down through the generations.

Nurturing Nutrition: In all their books, including The Healthy Body Cookbook: Over 50 Fun Activities and Delicious Recipes for Kids, D'Amico and Drummond strive for balance between good taste and good nutrition. Selecting, preparing and enjoying healthy foods are lifelong skills every child should learn early, and when kids are involved in planning and preparing meals, they'll often try new foods and flavors they might otherwise refuse. As an added bonus, many families find that cooking with kids brings the whole family together at meal time.

Who knew popping popcorn and baking brownies could be such worthwhile activities? Not to mention fun! "Just go in with an open mind and have fun," says D'Amico, "and when the product comes out, enjoy it!"

At Discover This, your source for science kits, we've had great fun – and great success! – with The Science Chef: 100 Fun Food Experiments and Recipes for Kids. Here are a few other tasty science treats our families enjoy:




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