Most special needs classrooms find cooking to be a fun activity that teaches sensory integration, math, science, social skills, reading and communication. There are many easy-to-find resources online for cooking with children, but harder to find are resources for cooking in the classroom for learners with special needs.One resource is actually a compilation of links from the page of another teacher of learners with special needs. While I encourage you all to check out all of the information on this site the links on Cooking in the Classroom are particularly excellent as well as the seven downloads of picture recipes.
Other sites with picture or photograph recipes include: Visual Recipes, Healthy Recipes, Nellie Edge and Great Recipes for Kids (scroll down).
Another website to check out is Savory Palette, with their free download of a cookbook for those with visual impairments.
E-parent has an interesting and unique article on using a bread maker with students who have disabilities that is well worth a read and may find you hitting up Craigslist or Freecycle for a bread maker.
The University of Illinois has a free online program to make and print any picture recipe you want called Custom Picture Recipes. You will need to play around a bit, but the site is very cool and extremely useful.
If you need photographic images of foods to use in making your own recipes I strongly recommend StockFood.
I teach special needs students cooking skills while practicing math and reading skills. Here is a great resource I use with my students it can be found at http://www.teaching-life-skills.com/index.html It really work I hope that it is helpful to you.
ReplyDelete