Cookin' in the classroom

Today (back in March) I set out to conquer spaghetti and meatballs with grade 5 students in their normal class room with no kitchen equipment. I say conquer because this was our second try at the lab. Something told me yesterday that I should stop the lab and try again another day- that something could have been the children yelling things a crossed the room- in Thai of course or the kid bouncing the ball all over the place and asking me every 5 seconds if he could eat a cracker or just maybe the kids chasing each other around the room with gunky meatball hands trying not to lose their meatballs while I was trying to cook (mostly burning) the huge meatballs I had already captured? Not sure which one it was, so you can take your pick. I have really lost my touch here- I haven't cooked with kids in almost 10 months and these kiddos don't understand everything I say so I needed to reevaluate my plan. So today I came in with some new rules and better directions to help win the battle of the meatballs. We added some more spices and crackers to our lumps of meat and finally got them into balls. Then for the cooking. We have one grill/ pot combo hot plate to cook on and twenty plus kids. So I have noddles going in the pot and six kiddos cooking their meatballs on the grill- pretty amazing we had something good to eat at the end and no one got hurt. It only took us two days and four class periods. Mission accomplished- finally. I clearly have some things to work out before cooking during the normal school year!

Check out some of the pictures. Some of them have their chefs hats we made the first day on. They think they are pretty cool when they have them on while cooking- it's pretty cute.