For participants involved in the Kids’ Cooking Café, learning to cook can lead to learning greater lessons than they expected.

The Kids’ Cooking Cafe, which began Tuesday, is organized and promoted by the School of Continuing Education as part of their Summer School program. Beth Craig, the school’s coordinator of program development, said that Continuing Education organizes each program alongside the department running the class, such as Theatre Arts and CATS, as well as Family and Consumer Sciences, as examples.

“The School of Continuing Education works in collaboration with the departments to hold these programs,” Craig said.

For the Kids’ Cooking Café, participants will learn a variety of topics related to cooking over the next two weeks. Aside from cooking dishes from scratch, the students will also learn about etiquette, healthy eating, and helpful life skills, Kathy Rhodes said.

Rhodes, an instructor in the department of Family and Consumer Sciences said her students learn useful life skills.

“It teaches them mathematical skills, as far as measurement goes,” Rhodes said. “Weighing, because some recipes, like making their own pasta, they have to weigh out the semolina flour. And then it teaches them organizational skills. Time scheduling: What times to start cooking something, and to have everything come together as a whole at the very end so everything is ready at the same time.”

Aside from the useful skills students learn to use in the kitchen and elsewhere, the Kids’ Cooking Café also provides an opportunity for the students to show off their hard work to their family and friends in a restaurant setting. With the help of Rhodes, each age group will operate the restaurant, serving food they have prepared during the class.

“The restaurant will be open to parents, and the parents have to RSVP through me, because we’ll have to know how much food to prepare,” Rhodes said. “And that’s another thing I teach the children: If you’re going to have two people, that’s different than having ten people, because you have to make more food for ten people.”

Another aspect of having students run the restaurant Rhodes said is the pride students get to express in their work. Rhodes said the children enjoy this because of the role reversal that takes place when the students’ parents are served.

“I want the children to be proud of what they’ve done. ‘We made this.or this is how this is done,’ and children just eat that up, because roles have been reversed and now the child is waiting on the parent instead of the parent always waiting on the child,” he said. “It’s just fun.”

In order to effectively teach the students and ensure each student receives appropriate attention during class time, Rhodes employs the help of college students hoping to learn from administering the class. This shines a different light on the lessons the Café offers, placing a focus on what can be taken out of interacting with young students.

“The class itself is a diagnostic reading class,” said Dan Carter, professor of the elementary education class that helps Rhodes. “So much of what they are doing now is classroom seatwork-intense instruction, that it was nice to be able to walk over and have some actual integrative learning; some field experience that way.”

Rhodes, who worked with Carter last year to integrate his elementary education class into helping the cooking class, agreed that the experience teaches the college students while also providing her a better opportunity to help the younger students.

“Now, as part of our integrative learning, they come over and they help me with this class one day a week,” Rhodes said. “It kills two birds with one stone actually. It helps them with the integration of the children, for them, and it helps me on the pasta day.be in more control over the (younger) students and how they’re doing the pasta.”

For Rhodes, the Kids’ Cooking Café is her favorite part of the school year she said, citing the camaraderie that grows out of the interaction among the students.

“This is the absolute highlight of my entire year,” she said. “I wait for this to happen, because I love this program. I love it.”

“It teaches them one of the best things in the world that I can’t even teach them,” Rhodes said. “What it gives them is an opportunity to build friendships and camaraderie with other children.”

To Dan Carter, the atmosphere of camaraderie can be credited to the efforts of Rhodes.

“The program that she runs with the children is top notch,” he said. “Very well organized. I like that she keeps it fun, upbeat, and she’s able to introduce concepts that children aren’t necessarily getting within the regular school curriculum.

“She’s an excellent leader in terms of being able to take my class, who she’s never met, and immediately build rapport with them, and have the partnership with elementary students.”

Greg Sainer can be reached at 581-7942 or gpsainer@eiu.edu.

Johanna Danner, 5, turns the handle while she learns how to make pasta with a pasta maker at the Kids Cooking Cafe Wednesday morning in Klehm Hall. Children ages 5-12 could participate in the class.Audrey Sawyer

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