Cooking is not only a fun, engaging activity for children, but one that can be used to teach a variety of life skills. The first of these are the fine motor skills associated with working with food. Chopping, squeezing, spreading, and mixing are all fine motor skills that help develop a child’s small muscle control and eye-hand coordination.

The next of these involve cognitive skills. Cooking inspires children’s curiosity, thinking, and problem solving, offering new opportunities to make predictions and observations.  Additionally, cooking offers authentic opportunities for students to understand and apply their knowledge of measuring, one-to-one correspondence, numbers, and counting.

As they follow a recipe, children organize ingredients, follow a sequence, and carry out multiple directions. Lastly, are the language skills one acquires through the act of food preparation. With its own vocabulary, cooking is a great opportunity for language development. In our classroom we take advantage of opportunities for children to match pictures to words and articulate questions inspired by their new experiences.

For this activity in particular, we created a very simple dish of guacamole. In every activity I do, I create numbered directions, so that students can figure out the process on their own. The key vocabulary words for this activity were “mash”, “guacamole”, and “spicy.”

Your little one learned about the ancient city of Oaxaca with this fun activity. Perchep atop a hillside, the Zapotec Ruins of Monte Albans house a city of Meso-American pyramids. These flat-topped structures provided shelter for the ancient Aztec peoples of Mexico.

To help your little one connect to this fascinating culture, they created their own pyramids out of specially-made blocks. One of the characteristics that contributes significantly to your little ones’ cognitive development, is the ability to fabricate an image they can replicate through construction.

Nurturing this form of symbolic representation plays a major milestone in your budding builder’s development. Building, balancing, and ordering through play provides a foundation for more abstract mathematical reasoning.

Mexico’s fantastically varied climatic regions mean that as well as the flourishing forests and jungles of the south, one can also experience the enjoyment of magnificent mountains and deserts in Mexico.

For this activity, we talked about the Chihuahuan Desert.

Stretching from the southwestern United States deep into the Central Mexican Highlands, this desert is one of the largest and most biologically diverse deserts in North America.

Pronghorn antelope, mule deer and grey fox roam the vast grasslands of the northern desert, while roadrunners, reptiles, jackrabbits and eagles live in the desert scrub.

To introduce the concept of a desert to your little one, we talked about what makes up a desert.

We used different vocabulary, such as “dry” and “hot”. We then discussed the different animals and plants that live there.

Finally, we created habitats for a variety of desert creatures, using sand, rocks, cacti, and toy creatures.

Materials have the potential to draw you in, make you want to stay a while, explore a little (or a lot), try new things, create and wonder. In our classroom, materials are carefully selected  for their potential to enhance learning and discovery.

Many of these materials come from natural sources such as pine cones, sand, rocks, etc. Children are experts at seeing the potential in these objects, and can use them to create glorious structures and pieces of art.

For this activity, we recreated the rock formation of Los Arcos, near Puerta Vallarta. This beautiful rock formation rises out of the ocean, and is the home of several birds.

It has been designated a marine sanctuary by the government of Mexico, and is a source of local pride. Using clay, planting cups, and rocks, we constructed our own version of it!

Deep within the jungles of Mexico and Guatemala and extending into the limestone shelf of the Yucatan peninsula lie the mysterious temples and Mayan pyramids.

One of these pyramids is The Pyramid of the Sun. The Pyramid of the Sun is the largest structure in Teotihuacan, and the second largest in Mesoamerica.

It is also the third largest pyramid in the world. The original purpose of the Pyramid of the Sun is unknown, though archaeologists believe it originally had an altar on top of the Pyramid. Therefore, it most likely was built to honor a deity. For this activity, we constructed our very own pyramids out of painted Styrofoam cups.

By giving your little one the opportunity to construct their own buildings, they are encouraged to practice their problem solving skills. Building activities also help your child to develop motor skills and hand-eye coordination, spatial skills, a capacity for creative, divergent thinking, and increased language.

Moreover, children can integrate their own constructions into pretend play scenarios. There is also evidence that complex construction play is linked with advanced math skills in later life.

When young children categorize items by number, they are beginning to perceive the relationships between them.

As they evolve in their ability to recognize and count the written numeral, they start to understand how they work together.

In this activity, your budding mathematician learned how to recognize and count pom poms within the scope of our Mexican theme.

Using pom poms and sombreros, students placed these items into six different sombreros, counting and naming the numbers while doing so.