Cooking Up Literacy Tips

The Kitchen: One of the Best Classrooms in Your Home

What did you notice?"

That may be one of the most powerful questions a parent can ask.

Whether your child is washing blueberries, counting strawberries, measuring yogurt, or reading a recipe aloud, they're doing much more than preparing a snack—they're building vocabulary, practicing math, strengthening reading skills, and learning to communicate.

This is called food-based learning, and it's one of the easiest ways to make learning feel natural and fun.

At What's Stirring Family Foundation, our Cooking Up Literacy program was created around this simple idea: children learn best when they can read, talk, move, create, and share experiences with the people they love.

Parent Tip of the Week

The next time you're preparing a meal or snack together, choose one new word to explore.

For example, if you're making a fruit parfait, you might introduce the word

ingredient.

Ask questions like:

• What are the ingredients?

• Which ingredient is your favorite?

• What ingredient could we add next time?

• Can you use the word ingredient in a sentence?

In just a few minutes, you've built vocabulary, encouraged conversation, and helped your child make meaningful connections—all without opening a workbook.

Small conversations like these help children become stronger readers because reading isn't just about recognizing words. It's about understanding, describing, questioning, and thinking.

That's what literacy looks like in everyday life.

We'd love for your family to join us at one of our monthly Cooking Up Literacy gatherings at the Bethany Church Road Community Resource Center in Snellville, where families read together, prepare healthy recipes, discover new vocabulary, and create lasting memories around the table.

Because sometimes the best learning begins with a book, a bowl, and a conversation.

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