PLAY-based Lessons with Fresh Vegetables

Kid Kitchen makes veggies fun for kids! In our classroom enrichment offering, we bring fresh produce into schools for children to investigate and explore. Our lessons are play-based, providing raw ingredients for touching, smelling, and tasting with fun tools. We also discuss the whole plants, from how they grow to how a plant can help our bodies alongside photos and videos of plants in the wild and on the plate.

Our teaching philosophy pulls from the work of Maria Montessori and encourages child-led learning alongside a curiosity for the natural world. The curriculum also draws inspiration from TasteEd and the Sapere method, two European programs which have had great success nurturing confident young eaters. Following these models, recipes are intentionally kept simple or excluded altogether to allow for experimentation and sensory learning. There is time included to discuss all five senses and how to approach the sometimes scary feeling of trying a new food.

Among friends, kids are often excited to try the same veggies that they refuse at home (the good form of peer pressure)! We’ve even seen Brussels sprouts become a coveted item — just say it’s something we’re saving for the end and suddenly every child wants to try. In a Kid Kitchen lesson, students learn that trying new foods is fun!

Sample Lesson (below): After a brief discussion of textures, the kids played a few rounds of “guess the mystery vegetable.” Then it was time to explore!