Spoons Summer Recipe Days is a six to eight, weekly session food and nutrition literacy program for children 7-13 years old. Each one-hour session focuses upon a selected theme and recipe that encourages children to explore, prepare and taste healthy foods. Activities are presented in a fun, hands-on manner with opportunities to learn culinary skills, kitchen science, food origins and more!
Spoons Across America is currently offering trainings for Spoons Summer Recipe Days in May and June to organizations with summer day camp programs in New York City.
Training Workshop: In this 1/2 day hands-on training, held out our offices in midtown Manhattan, camp program staff will be introduced to Spoons Across America as an organization, and the goals and activities included in Spoons Summer Recipe Days. Participants engage in sample project activities, as well as discussion and work around concepts, rationale, and suggestions for implementing the lessons. Time is given for group interaction, questions, discussion, cooking and eating, planning time, and of course, fun!
The training is designed for all site personnel who will be involved in the direct implementation of Spoons Summer Recipe Days as well as other interested and relevant site and community members. Specific members should be determined by the site but may include: teachers, counselors and specialists, food service manager(s) and/or personnel, nutritionist(s) and/or health teachers, site administrators, other staff, parent volunteers, community volunteers and others.
Cost of Training and Support: $1000.00. Fee includes:
* All training materials, food, and supplies for up to 5 people. (A supplemental fee will be charge for additional attendees).
* Spoons Recipe Days Curriculum Guide for each attendee
* Spoons Across America Apron for all attendees
* 25 Food Explorer Kits including reusable cutting boards, child safe knives and other cooking tools.
* Preprinted implementation materials including parent letters, handouts for kids, food and supply lists, and other lesson-related materials.
Spoons Summer Recipe Days awakens and inspires a lifelong passion in children to explore smarter, more nutritious and more diverse food choices. Children who experience this program improve their relationship with food, are more knowledgeable about nutrition, more enthusiastic about sharing meals with family and friends, and more likely to lead healthy lives.
In each session of Spoons Recipe Days, children;
- Explore and discover the individual ingredients in the selected recipe and use their increasingly complex taste vocabulary to discuss their observations of and reactions to these ingredients.
- Learn about the nutritious aspects of these ingredients and any local, seasonal and cultural elements of the dish.
- Prepare the recipe, learning knife and food preparation skills to help them to gain the confidence that will enable them to participate in mealtime preparation at home. Together with their fellow campers, children enjoy the prepared recipe, discuss how the flavors had changed, and what they liked, didn’t like or would do differently.
Sample Outline of Sessions:
– Lesson 1: Developing a Taste Vocabulary
– Lesson 2: Knife Skills, Safety and Science in the Kitchen
– Lesson 3: Farming, Culture, and Community
– Lesson 4: Healthy Snacks
– Lesson 5: Food Groups and Balanced Eating
– Lesson 6: We Can Eat the Whole Plant!
– Lesson 7: Grow Your Own
– Lesson 8: From Cow to Cone