Easy, effective KS1 and 2 cookery lessons from Leiths Academy

Cooking lessons have the potential to improve diet quality and reduce obesity prevalence in childhood.

For that reason alone, every child should be taught to cook, learn more about food, and understand what it takes to bring a meal to the table. It is their entitlement and a life skill that requires practice to develop.

Schools clearly have a key role in teaching children how to eat well, but there are significant challenges in delivering the food curriculum, and time devoted to cookery lessons isn’t always easy or high-priority. Cooking is fast becoming a lost art.

Imagine, though, if there were resources available from a cookery school with an international reputation that had designed an innovative cookery curriculum, complete with step-by-step class instruction videos, specifically for KS1 and 2.

Well, that’s precisely what Leiths Academy has done!

Turn to the experts

Leiths is widely regarded as the ‘home’ of cookery teaching and a first-class culinary institute for chefs, producing some of the industry’s biggest names.

Its new interactive cookery resources provide primary children with a complete food education experience and help schools deliver a compulsory national curriculum subject.

The national curriculum doesn’t give specific guidance about how cooking and nutrition should be taught, so schools get to decide how to deliver their lessons.

This is where Leiths can help because its offering comprises flexible and practical hands-on lessons that champion cooking from scratch, driven by their vision of enabling high-quality, practical cookery teaching for pupils of all ages and needs.

“Leiths is widely regarded as the ‘home’ of cookery teaching and a first-class culinary institute for chefs, producing some of the industry’s biggest names.”

The lessons form part of a complete Leiths school cookery programme about how to cook healthy, simple, and delicious recipes.

Its creators have gone the extra mile and produced a selection of recipes that teach pupils how to handle a range of ingredients, key food skills, and a variety of cooking techniques that can be practised at school or at home.

The lessons introduce children to a host of ingredients and flavours, with a strong emphasis on using high-quality, seasonal produce and sustainable cooking practices.

An extensive menu

Leiths recognises that, done right, cooking at school affords pupils the chance to get to grips with a range of culinary and nutritional concepts while also providing opportunities to improve children’s health one meal at a time.

Its curriculum offers:

• > 32 easy-to-implement, successfully tried-and-tested lessons dovetailed to the national curriculum, core competencies around food, and the framework of knowledge and skills for food teaching
• > Highly engaging teaching videos for children to follow step by step with precise instruction and guidance
• > A set of classroom-based lesson plans with cross-curricular links and creative activities for each key stage
• > Practical recipes, supported by teacher set-up notes, details of the equipment required, and scalable shopping lists
• > Fun and engaging pupil worksheets with varied activities
• > A mix of recipes and skills that can be adapted to a wider audience
• > Affordable ingredients costing less than £1 per pupil per session

The Leiths lesson plans equip children with the skills to grow their confidence and abilities while helping them explore and investigate their personal connections to food and cooking. 

It’s not about turning them into mini chefs, but about piquing their interest and getting them engaged and excited. 

Suitable for every school

Teaching kitchens and food technology rooms are not a common feature of primary school settings, which is why Leiths has created lessons that centre on heat-free recipes that can be delivered in a ‘pop-up’ kitchen in class.

The recipes require simple, everyday cooking equipment that can be easily packed away and stored in between lessons, though the curriculum package also includes recipes that use a plug-in induction hob and an oven, in line with the guidance that KS2 pupils must learn how to cook safely with heat.

The recipes on offer are affordable, accessible and inclusive, reflecting the tastes of today’s young people. These include a diverse menu of healthy dishes such as pea, basil, and tomato bruschetta, banana and kiwi pancakes, and vegetable laksa.

The recipes are predominately savoury and have all been carefully developed to ensure they are age-appropriate and achievable by all children.

Teachers don’t have to worry about being a Bake Off champion or a MasterChef winner either, thanks to the step-by-step videos provided for children to cook along to. Chef AJ explains exactly what needs to be done and how to do it with great enthusiasm and an energy that children will love.     

“The recipes on offer are affordable, accessible and inclusive, reflecting the tastes of today’s young people.”

Leiths’ state-of-the-art digital resources include everything staff need to deliver effective, practical, and memorable lessons and promote culinary conversations.

At the heart of all them all is the goal of teaching children about ingredients, flavours, and the techniques they need to prepare really delicious food. 

It’s a culinary arts curriculum that supports cooking skills development through planning, experimentation, reflection and curiosity.  It’s also a curriculum that promotes the pleasure of cooking and the pleasure of eating good, wholesome, tasty meals.   

Food for thought  

The Leiths Academy curriculum is guaranteed to make an impact, inspire creativity, and facilitate some serious hands-on cheffing that will get children up and running with some basic skills right away.

Discover more about how Leiths new digital resources can help you teach your children about food, cooking fundamentals, and nutrition, and get your FREE seven-day trial now to test four recipes with lesson plans, accompanying pupil resources and videos.