Whether at the Family Literacy Centre, or our summer location the Pioneer Hotel, our Little Chefs program invites children and families to practice basic cooking skills while exploring new foods and simple recipes. Each Little Chefs session begins with a story and focusses on families working together to create tasty meals and snacks that are both nutritious and fun to make. Research shows that when we cook nourishing foods with our children, we model healthy choices that set them up for a lifelong love of eating well. Plus, when preparing food, we practice a range of basic literacy skills like counting, measuring, identifying and labelling, effective communication, cooperation, and more!

In partnership with the Kwanlin Dun First Nation, our staff provide weekly cooking classes to K-6 students throughout the school year. As part of the Kenädän Kú / House of Learning tutoring program, participating students develop basic cooking and kitchen safety skills while learning to prepare simple, healthy recipes they can make independently at home. In addition to 1:1 instruction from our staff, older students are encouraged to guide the younger children through reading recipes, using math to measure, decision making, trying new foods, and cleaning up.

When the covid-19 pandemic left students isolating at home, this program ensured that participants were able to cook nutritious meals while out of school. Multiple kitchen-themed Literacy Activity Bags were distributed to individual households and contained the ingredients, kitchen-ware materials, and instructions to prepare various healthy meals with their families.