Final Blog Post

I learned a lot from my 20% project. My 20% project focused on the importance of teaching children how to cook. In my Weebly website, I categorized the importance into four major groups.

1) The Importance of Cooking: Cooking is a great opportunity for eduction because it encourages learning. It requires reading, measurement, and following directions. Cooking also teaches healthy eating habits, which is what my 20% project primarily focused on. Having children participate with cooking and choosing to make healthier food options will give them the proper education towards food which will help them for the rest of their lives. Cooking also teaches hygiene and food safety to children. Before cooking, it is essential to wash hands especially when cooking with meats. Children learn about food safety so they know that the food they are cooking will not get others sick. Cooking also educates children about hazards in the kitchen. Children that spend time cooking with hot items will allow them to become successful cooks as adults.

2) If I were to integrate cooking into my classroom, my program would be similar to that of Kids Culinary Arts located in New Hampshire. The program gets kids in the kitchen to teach them to make healthy food. Kids not only have a great time, but they learn the importance of making healthy food over bad food. I believe that children will want to eat the food they create, so why not make their recipes healthy?

3) There are also numerous psychological effects of eating and cooking together as a family. I know personally my life would be different if I did not eat together with my family every night. On psychologytoday.com, they state that a child has much better eating habits if he/she eats with their family at least five nights a week. Eating as a family also helps the problem of childhood obesity. If a child is eating at the dinner table, their portions are controlled, they eat slower, and they are less like to "eat on the run," and not eat fast food.

4) Cooking integrated into the classroom only has positive benefits for children. It has been said that children's grades raise in their other classes from cooking classes. Cooking is a hands on activity that incorporates things learned in the classroom like science, reading, and social skills.

FINAL PRODUCT OF 20% PROJECT

Even though I am technologically challenged, the website creator Weebly was quite simple for me to use. It is connected with my 20% project because I made it easy to use for teachers and students. I also made it kid friendly with bright colors and a lot of pictures. In my weebly site, I even included a simple, fun recipe teachers can incorporate with students in the classroom.

The difficulties I had were my fear of technology. I was stressed to make a final product that I could compare with my peers, since I am bad at using new applications and softwares. But in the end, my peers were really impressed with my final product and my subject in general. Everyone who visited my product at the final showcase seemed very intrigued with my work, which gave me confidence and broke my fear of creating websites.