Cooking pancakes provides plenty of learning opportunities for young kids!
One of the favorite things my kids love to cook is pancakes, of course! I believe it was one of the first things I actively encouraged my kids to take part of in the kitchen, simply because it’s fun to help stir, it’s exciting to watch the pancakes sizzle and flip, and it’s delicious to pile the toppings on. There are many ways to learn with pancakes. Here are some of the great activities we’ve done in the past years.
Learning with a Pancake Party
Cooking pancakes is a fun extension of our school day. Here’s what we learn by making pancakes.
- Basic cooking skills, such as how to measure in cups, tsp, and Tbsp, as well as liquid measuring
- Recipe sequencing
- Recipe doubling
- Reading a recipe
- Event sequencing
- Planning ahead (i.e., toppings)
- Counting pancakes, adding/subtracting, or dividing pancakes among people.
We also decided to make pretend pancake party task cards to practice these concepts. In addition to those items above, here’s what our pretend party adds.
- Reading an analog clock
- Elapsed time
- Simple logic
- Pancake multiplication
Learning with PANCAKES
I’ve made these activities in a pancake activity pack (18 pages in color or b/w) as well as in pancake task card format (42 task cards). They are sold together! You could simple omit the cards you don’t want to include if you go with the task cards, or omit the pages from the packet if you do not want your child to practice the concepts. Either way, figuring out these pancake problems are a lot of fun.
Picture-Book Inspired Pancake Lessons
For my kindergartner, it was a lot of fun to read pancakes books as well as cooking and eating pancakes. What would kindergarten be without great picture books? We used some pancaked-themed picture books to learn about where pancake ingredients come from.
Cut-up sentences, sequencing, and story summaries make pancakes picture books even more fun.
Pancake Picture Book Unit
The pancake picture book lesson plan for kindergarten and first grade. It lists three popular books (as well as alternates) about pancakes. Included along with the lesson plan ideas to coordinate with the stories are some simple worksheets: cut, glue, and write sentences; retell the story by filling in the blank; how-to sequencing; and a creative writing prompt.
As for picture books, I focus on some great classics by classic illustrators. These include picture books by Eric Carle, Tomie DiPaola, and the Laura Numeroff.
Pancakes, Pancakes! by Eric Carle gives the background of where the ingredients for pancakes come from. For example, to get the milk, our main character has to go milk the cow. It's pretty ridiculous, but great for a practical lesson on our common resources.
Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie DePaola is actually a mostly wordless picture book! It gives a humorous story about pancakes that makes the reader drool.
If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff, illustrated by Felicia Bond, provides a thought experiment for the young reader. Just like the other books in this series, one thing leads to another, which ends up back at the beginning: a pig wanting a pancake! I use this as a writing prompt for what the kids think will happen.
Imagining with Pancakes
Some of the best learning for the youngest learners comes from imagination play. This includes pretend play as kids mix, cook, and eat pretend pancakes! For the non-readers or very early readers, I've set up some "Craftivities" to do along the same pancake theme. Craftivities are crafts that are mixed into an activity.
These craftivities have simple writing prompts combined with a coloring, cutting, and pasting. I provided different writing templates so teachers can differentiate.
I also have a free pancake poem mini-lesson, with simple ideas for using it for class discussion. Some people hesitate to consider poetry in their classroom or homeschool, but I think poetry is the best item for creating on-the-fly mini-lessons. This free product may help you get some ideas as to how you can do that!
You can get the “Mix a Pancake” Poem and Mini-lesson for free when you sign up to become a Line upon Line Learning VIP.
Or, consider some other easy kids recipes! How can you make those into learning moments?
Cooking pancakes provides plenty of learning opportunities for young kids!