AM Field Trip: Cooking Class!

To kick off the month of June we had a delicious field trip to Bahía del Sol which is a local hotel. Meradith has some contacts there and was able to set up a cooking lesson for the kids. Around 25 kids ended up going on the field trip, and they were all extremely excited from the very beginning. We told them to behave themselves on the field trip since we were going to a hotel and had to respect the hotel guests, as well as the hotel employees that would be giving them their cooking lesson. The kids behaved very well, and had tons of fun. First, the kids received a natural resources lesson from one of the employees at Bahía del Sol. He gave them a power point presentation, but also made it interactive by asking the kids questions.

After this presentation we split up into 5 cooking groups and waited for instructions. Each table had their own Bahía del Sol employee as well as a few Abriendo Mentes volunteers. While we waited for the master chef to get to our group’s table we went around the table, reading the recipe. Bahía del Sol was nice enough to give us some delicious juice that the kids absolutely enjoyed. When the chef got to our table he put the ingredients together in the bowl, and each time he’d put in a new ingredient we’d ask the kids how to say that ingredient in English. They knew more than I thought they would! The kids were so excited to be making cookies, and put a lot of chocolate chips on each cookie. They also gave us a few cookie-cutters so the kids made cookies in the shape of stars and fish. After we finished rolling the dough into cookie form we stuck the sheets of cookies into the oven.

We then had to wait around 20 minutes so we played duck-duck-goose on the grass near the cooking area. Finally, the moment that we had all been waiting for arrived – we tasted the cookies. I thought that kids would be fighting for cookies, but they were very respectful of each other, and one of the students, seeing that I didn’t have a cookie, gave me one of his biggest ones. All in all it was a great experience for the kids, the volunteers, and the employees at Bahía del Sol. A big thanks to Meradith for making the field trip possible, and to Bahía del Sol for leading such an entertaining activity for the kids. It was a great start to a new month at Abriendo Mentes.