In the Mix: Sacred Heart of Jesus School Students Learn Life Skills Through Cooking

Sacred Heart of Jesus School third and fourth graders were tasked with making kebabs from deli turkey slices, cheese cubes and pickles for a Thanksgiving lesson in their cooking and baking class in November.

“They had to figure out how to evenly cut those parts they had into the right pieces, and then on their kebab, they needed to come up with a pattern,” says Rene Gerschutz, a fifth grade teacher at the Wadsworth school. “It was amazing how many different patterns they came up with.”

The class is a one-semester, once a week enrichment elective for third and fourth graders, who complete a service project the following semester.

The Thanksgiving lesson also included making a no-bake pumpkin pie. Students whisked milk and vanilla pudding mixture together and folded in canned pumpkin before chilling the concoction, pouring it in a mini graham cracker pie crust and cooling it again. They served the pie with whipped cream.

The lesson involves math — adapting the recipe for five or six people. “They’re multiplying, which is doubling a recipe, tripling,” Gerschutz says. “Also dividing it up at the end — if you made a big batch and six of you want to eat it, how are we going to evenly split that?”

Cooking helps with other subjects too. “There’s also a lot of science. In the third and fourth grade level, they learn about different states of matter. They learn about chemical and physical changes,” Gerschutz says. “We can make trail mix and get one kind of change, and we can make pumpkin pie and get a different kind of change.”

Kitchen techniques stick with students.

“I knew a little bit how to fold, but it really helped me understand it better,” says fourth grader Jude Metzin, who made the mini pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving at home.

“I learned how to properly use the electric mixer, and at home, I also practice with my mom,” says fourth grader Klarke Lamberg. “We had to make sure we didn’t do it too fast, made it splatter or lift it up.”

Principal John Czaplicki says enrichment electives are about teaching life skills — and helping students develop interests for when they get to pick electives, such as photography, Lego robotics and more, in fifth through eighth grade.

“They’re reaching that age where they’re given more responsibility,” he says. “This gives them a very practical, real-life way of living out those skills.”