Cooking in special education classrooms that teach life skills can be very important. Enter the COVID19 pandemic, and some special education teachers are now teaching remotely to their students with special needs. How can we still teach this important life skill of cooking in the virtual world? It might not be as easy as in the classroom, but cooking remotely in special education can be done! Guess what-there are even added benefits to this unique situation!
Helping students to cook while at home and teaching them this skill remotely can actually be a really great idea! It can help students bond with their parents in their kitchen while cooking together. It can also promote students to independently make their own breakfast, snack or lunch during the day! Here are 5 tips to make cooking remotely in special education easy!
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#1 Send the Ingredient List Ahead of Time
Send the ingredient list ahead of time so that the ingredients will be ready before you are on video together. Somethings you will need to consider when cooking remotely in special education:
-how often you will cook with your class
-will you be purchasing the ingredients as the teacher
-will you have parents purchase the ingredients themselves each time
-will you ask for a specific money amount from families to purchase ingredients for cooking
#2 Send the Recipe Ahead of Time
Sending the recipe for cooking remotely ahead of time has many positive motives. It will give students the ability to read through the recipe independently. It will also increase their confidence when reading through the recipe as a class. In addition, students and parents will need to make sure they have the proper supplies out and ready. They may need things such as measuring cups, spoons, bowls, oven turned on, etc. If any students may need adapted cooking tools, you can check out my favorites on Amazon and read the blog post here.
#3 Start with a Simple Recipe
Simple is what I do best and that’s even true in my cooking recipes! I have a very simple and FREE visual recipe to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for you. I love starting with a simple recipe like this for many reasons. Students won’t need any fancy cooking tools and most families have the ingredients on hand already. Finally, you could make this recipe right before the lunch break so their lunch is ready to go that day! Can you say independent life skill?! That rarely happens at school because at the school I used to work at, we were not allowed to cook before lunch and students generally ate lunch in the cafeteria. I definitely see an opportunity here for our students with special needs!
#4 Have the Proper Camera for the Video Lesson
Okay, you don’t need to get super fancy and high tech when starting to cook remotely with your students. Make it easy on yourself and make sure your computer is sitting in a good spot in your kitchen. You want your students to be easily able to see you and what you are doing. If cooking remotely goes well, then you may want to invest in some more high tech equipment. Document cameras such as the Hue, VK4 or Bochani (affiliate links) are nice options if you feel like you need something besides your embedded webcam. You may want to zoom-in on the recipe under the document camera. You may also want to be able to move it quickly while you are moving around the kitchen.
#5 Take Your Time and Have FUN!
Finally, cooking should be fun! Try not to stress out if something does not go as planned (hey that’s pretty typical in our world, right?!) Let your students see how much fun cooking can be and praise them for doing a good job! For some, this might be the first time cooking in their own kitchen. Remind them of the rules with the kitchen equipment (i.e.-never use the oven or microwave without an adult). In addition, make your students realize that they can help their parents in the kitchen! There is so much that they can do themselves to be independent!
Final Thoughts
Cooking should be fun, not scary! Start simple like I said. I have a whole bundle of Visual Recipes that will last you the whole year! There are 40 recipes total, none of which need an oven or stove! Simple!
These recipes all include:
– Visual Recipe
– Tools and Ingredients List
– Sequencing Page
– Survey
– Tools and Ingredients worksheet
Have you tried cooking remotely yet this school year? How did it go?
((This blog post contained affiliate links for your convenience. You don’t pay any more by clicking my link (and I actually find the best prices for you!) but I make a small commission off of sales. This helps me to test out more materials and bring you more quality content. Thanks for supporting my little blog!))
Why not have simple recipes that are healthy for students with disabilities in special education to learn how to make? This is one thing we forget to teach students with disabilities in special though.