Do You Know the Montessori Food Preparation Sequence?

Would you hand a three-year-old a knife?

Okay, to be fair, we’re talking a blunt knife, not a sharp one, to prepare food.

Sequence of Food Preparation Activities

#1 – Slicing

Children learn to slice bananas (with a blunt knife), cucumbers, strawberries, apple (with corer), celery, hard-boiled eggs, carrots (peeling & slicing)

#2 – Spreading

Using a child-sized spreader, children spread warm butter, cream cheese, peanut butter onto toast, raw bread, crackers, and vegetables.

#3 – Make food that doesn’t require heat

Butter in a bag, bread, peanut butter with a food grinder, cracking peanuts, hammering nuts, vegetable dip, cheese & meat snack, slicing hard-boiled eggs or making deviled eggs, making a smoothie, drying foods, making salads, using a melon baller to prepare a melon snack, grate cheese, squeeze lemon, crush herbs with mortar & pestle.

#4 – Making food that does require heat

Apple sauce, bread, vegetable soup, pizza, sweet treats like brownies or cookies, scones, foods from other countries such as dumplings, tea, pasta

#5 – Re-create recipes using measurement

Use step by step visual recipe cards to allow children to complete a recipe work cycle. This work is great pre-math work!

#6 – Create new recipes

This last part of the sequence requires some preparation of mindset and environment. Allow the children to create their own recipes, observe, and experience the results. Ask inquiry questions along the way. Document the recipe to complete the work cycle. This work is a wonderful pre-science activity!

Bringing kids into the kitchen is fun and simple to do. Being patient with experience is key. Your mindset needs to embrace the fact that there might be a bigger mess and the prep may take a bit longer. That is the name of the game. Think about the long term rather than the short term.

You’ll find loads of resources for bringing kids into the kitchen on Montessori Services site!

Have fun!

Marnie

Marnie Craycroft

Marnie hails from Maine where she spent summers buried in sand and winters buried in snow. She is the daughter of a nearly four decade veteran of the public school systems. Teaching has always been a part of her life. She founded Carrots Are Orange in 2010.

Carrots Are Orange is a Montessori learning and living website for parents and teachers.

Marnie graduated from Wesleyan University in 1999 with a BA in Economics. She spent nearly a decade working in investment management. In 2006, she earned her MA in business from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.

Marnie moved to the west coast in 1999 and currently lives in Boulder with her husband and three sons. She is Montessori trained. Her work has been featured on Apartment Therapy, Buzzfeed, PBS Kids, BabyCenter, the Melissa & Doug blog, Huffington Post, and WhattoExpect.com. Besides writing, passions include running (usually after her three sons), photography, and outdoor adventures.