| Reviewers Comments: | Kids a Cookin’ and Movin’ is a fun way to get kids excited about cooking, nutrition, and health. This is an addition to the original Kids a Cookin’ & Movin’ curriculum which incorporates the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The four lessons included are 1-Mini Meals & Movin’ More, 2-Starting Smart with Breakfast, 3-Choose a Lunch to Cheer About and 4-Save a Seat for Suppertime. Each lesson features 2 recipes, a video tour (of a food factory, fast food restaurant, or supermarket), a tip or technique on cooking or nutrition, an interactive quiz, and a link to the curriculum with recipes, facilitator guides, newsletters/handouts, evaluations sheets, and links to additional resources. There are also several short clips on different aspects of food safety, and various types of physical activity. Each clip can be played on its own, as a part of the complete lesson, or in a continuous loop. Lessons and clips are complete enough that they may be used individually as a stand-alone tool or as part of a series along with the curriculum. If used as a series, some information may be repeated. The DVD can be played with Spanish audio. While the DVD is geared for and directed at children aged 8 to 11 years old, children and adults of all ages can enjoy and learn from the DVD as well. Though the children featured in the video do not necessarily reflect multicultural diversity, the recipes and lessons are appropriate for an ethnically diverse audience.
The recipes included are kid-friendly and rated on a difficulty scale of easy, medium, and hard, but the majority of them are rated easy. There is no nutritional information included on the DVD, but this information is available on the web site. Recipes are prepared in a manner similar to an adult’s cooking show on television, with child helpers. Most of the ingredients are readily available and items are used which with kids would be familiar. During the video preparation of the recipe for Wafflewiches, the recipe calls for “salad dressing”, but it could appear that regular mayonnaise is used, which may be confusing for some people. The physical activity breaks and video tours during the lessons are pleasant interludes from the cooking demonstrations. The music and quick moving scenes make the segments fun and enjoyable. Quizzes at the end of the lesson help to review key concepts. Some of the quiz questions have multiple correct answers and only one answer can be selected. While each correct answer is graded as such, there is no mention that there were other correct answers included as options. Food safety is gone over during the lessons and in short video clips – “When to wash hands”, “How to wash hands”, and “Rules for cooks”. During theses clips, most basic food safety rules are reviewed in a way children can understand. More detailed video tips, such as the appropriate temperatures to which meat should be cooked, are included on the web site.
Kids a Cookin’ & a Movin’ is a good resource for educators looking to teach cooking skills to kids using the latest in technology. The DVD uses innovative techniques that will appeal to kids and adults alike.
Note: Resource has not been reviewed to ensure compliance with the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. |
