As Thanksgiving approaches in Canada, food and gathering offer meaningful starting points for learning with children. Harvest celebrations around the world can invite conversations about the seasons, gratitude, and the foods people grow and share.
We can begin these explorations close to home—with the knowledge, stories, and everyday experiences of the families in our educational settings. A recipe can hold much more than ingredients and instructions. It might carry memories of cooking with a grandparent, a familiar taste from another place, or a meal that brings people together. Recipes can also change as families adapt to available ingredients, new routines, and different preferences. In my refelections about my own pedagogical practice, I often think about some things I would do differently or ‘add’ to my practice – and a family recipe book is one of them! This idea can be used to support pedagogical documentation, your inquiry board or also just to continue to cultivate a sense of belonging for all children including those from diverse cultural, linguistic and ethnic backgrounds.
WELCOMING FAMILY KNOWLEDGE
Inviting families to share a meaningful food or recipe creates an opportunity to learn about what matters to them. It might be a celebration dish, an everyday favourite, or something a child enjoys helping prepare.
Keep the invitation open and optional. Some families cook from memory, using taste and experience rather than written measurements. Others may prefer to share a photograph, voice recording, drawing, or story. Welcome contributions in home languages and avoid expecting any family to represent an entire culture.
You might ask:
- What food does your family enjoy sharing?
- Who taught you how to prepare it?
- Has the recipe changed over time?
- What does your child notice or help with when you make it?
FOLLOWING CHILDREN’S CURIOSITY
A Reggio-inspired approach invites us to notice the questions and possibilities that emerge from these contributions. Children might wonder where an ingredient grows, notice that families prepare similar foods differently, or become interested in the tools used for cooking. Their questions can guide investigations through conversation, observation, play, and different materials.
Offer opportunities to sketch ingredients, represent a familiar meal with clay, explore seeds and locally grown produce, or create a kitchen in the dramatic play space. Record children’s words and revisit their ideas together.
Food stories also create meaningful opportunities for literacy and mathematics: children can dictate instructions, explore ingredient names in different languages, compare quantities, and think about sequence.
aN INVITATION TO SHARE
The accompanying family recipe card offers a simple starting point. Invite families to use it in whatever way works for them—with words, pictures, children’s drawings, or a combination.
Include space for the story behind the food: Why is it meaningful? Who do you share it with? What would you like us to know?
With families’ permission, the contributions could become a classroom recipe collection that children can browse, revisit, and add to throughout the year.
Download the family recipe card and invite families to share a food story from home. You can find the recipe resource here
I hope this short blog post has given you a new way to explore harvest, food, and gathering with the children and families in your educational setting. A recipe card can open a conversation, and that conversation can help us know one another more fully. By welcoming family stories and following children’s curiosity, we make room for learning rooted in relationships and belonging.
Wishing you a lovely harvest season and Thanksgiving!
Kamini