- Build strong connections and family memories with your kids in the kitchen.
- Learn vital cooking techniques in fun and memorable ways – we focus on the skills, not the food, so it’s very allergy-friendly!
- Give even your pre-readers recipes they can make all by themselves so they feel confident and empowered (and they’re not in the way while you cook).
- Fight back against the damage processed foods wreak on your family’s health as you enjoy fresh, from-scratch meals for which everyone played a role.
- Empower your children to cook their own healthy meals with a generous measure of creativity so that they are prepared for adulthood (and feel confident being creative in other areas of life too)
- Feel confidentintroducing sharp knives and stove safety to your kids – and with all the thinking done for you,you may actually enjoy it!
- Spreading & Peeling
- Slicing Soft Foods with a Dull Knife
- Cross-Hatch Pattern Cuts
- Measuring Ingredients
- Soaking Dry Beans
- Pouring Skills
- Washing & Tearing Salad
- Working with Dough
- Following a Recipe Well
- Intro to Sharp Knives
- Cracking Eggs
- Making a Recipe Without Help
- Stovetop Safety & Cooking Rice
- Flipping Pancakes
- Rolling Dough
- Browning Ground Meat
- Sharp Knife Skills, Levels 1-4
- Slicing & Dicing Vegetables
- Crushing Garlic
- Cutting Whole Fruits
- Sauteing Vegetables
- Cooking Dry Beans
- Cooking Eggs
- Homemade White Sauce
- Steamed Vegetables
- Logically organized skill progression
- Looping skills create natural practice opportunities (so you don’t have to think about it)
- Designed for busy families: all ages coordinate to make something to eat!
- All 3 levels at your own pace ($535)
- 45 kid-friendly videos and comprehensive lessons plans
- 32 skills taught with recipes, planning guides, and memory tools included
- Access won’t expire ($30)
- Downloadable videos – play them anywhere (flash drive available for additional fee)
- Includes Kids Cook Solo: Independent Training Program ($49.95)
- Special hospitality class ($25)
- 15 more eBooks, videos and printables to make your kitchen time more enjoyable!
(KnoWEwell member discounts apply)
- Sensational Starters and Super Sides
- Silly Soups
- Main-Dish Meals
- Best Oven Bakes
- Delicious Desserts (or a Breakfast Bonanza)
- All 3 levels at your own pace ($535)
- 45 kid-friendly videos and comprehensive lessons plans
- 32 skills taught with recipes, planning guides, and memory tools included
- Access won’t expire ($30)
- Downloadable videos – play them anywhere (f
- Includes Kids Cook Solo: Independent Training Program ($49.95)
- Special hospitality class ($25)
- 15 more eBooks, videos and printables to make your kitchen time more enjoyable!
(KnoWEwell member discounts apply)
Yes! The beauty of this course is that it was totally designed to be family-friendly. I taught six children, two at each level, at the same time for almost every lesson. There are special “teaching multiple children” sections in the course materials to give you ideas on the order in which to present skills so that one age level can be practicing while you are working with another age level.
For almost every class, you’ll be able to juggle 2 or 3 age levels at the same time. And what they make usually ends up coming together to make one meal or snack that everyone can enjoy! See the Curriculum Map for the intricate module integrations to see what your kids might do.
Psssst! Parents, pass the device over to the kid. This part’s for them…
Hiya, kids.
If you’re old enough to read this yourself, you’re probably almost too old to be excited about helping Mom and Dad in the kitchen.
I’ve got a story for you, so hang with me.
My son Paul has always been kind of an “I don’t care what other people think” kid, being friends with girls in first grade when everyone else thought they had cooties, taking hip hop even though none of his friends were in it, and letting it roll off his back if kids teased him about his “real food” lunches that didn’t look like theirs.
Now that he’s in sixth grade, a strange thing has begun happening.
No, no – not THAT thing, sheesh – a lunchtime thing.
The guys who sit around him are jealous of his lunches.
They say stuff like:
“Your lunches are, like, 4-course gourmet!”
“I would totally trade my hot lunch for your lunch any day!”
And when he had some leftover casserole that he not only made himself but created himself (like, designed the recipe and chose the seasonings and all that), he got the best comments of all.
The other kids couldn’t believe he could do that, and (don’t tell him I told you, but…) I could see that he was proud of himself, too, because moms know stuff like that.
He probably would have snapped it if we let him have a phone, but we’re not cool parents. (Note to other uncool parents: that’s a reference to Snapchat. It’s a social media thing.)
One thing we do in the Kids Cook Real Food eCourse is to talk about “cooking like a TV chef” and I actually teach you how to just dump spices in your hand and throw them in the pot – without your parents having to throw out your meal because it was super disgusting.
And we talk about gas in the beans class. Just sayin’.
If you think it’s dumb after a couple classes, tell your parents and they can get their money back (they have 30 days).
I know, I know…I said the “d-word.” Don’t tell my 8-year-old or she’d have my head. 😉 Good thing I didn’t say the “s-word.”
If you want to make it sound like this was all your idea, feel free to tell your parents you decided you want to impress your friends by doing something they can’t do, or just that it’s time to learn to cook so you can be in charge of what you eat.
I won’t tell them a thing. #toomanysecrets
Stuff Real Kids Say About the Course
“The best part of doing these classes is getting to eat what you make!”
– Kelli, age 11, California
Best part = “Making my own recipe”
– Moroni, age 7, Missouri
Later, dude. Your parents can read the next part. (I do say “dude” in real life, seriously. Sorry about that.)
The best way to determine whether a child is Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced is to peruse the Curriculum Map that lists the skills taught at each level.
Some of the Beginner Level skills are appropriate for very young children, like ages 2-6 (i.e. careful pouring, building a colorful salad, spreading butter). Some of them are important foundations for any age, like peeling correctly, cross-hatch dicing, and measuring.
The Intermediate Level lays very important foundations such as sharp knife safety and stovetop safety. If your child has never worked with a sharp knife or at the stove, then they are definitely at Intermediate or Beginner, no matter their age. If you’re unsure about their ability in those areas, you can always watch part of the videos from Intermediate class 2 and 5 and see how your kids fare.
You can also pick and choose what classes to utilize and only teach a few from a level before moving on as well. I know of some young teens whose parents started them at the Beginner Level just for peeling and a couple of the other skills taught there. A teen could blow through those in combination with the Intermediate Level in a few hours. Many of our members with multiple children in the family have simply chosen to start everyone at the Beginner Level and move through all 24 lessons together.
The bottom line is that your child’s experience, personality, and your tolerance for new things and risks will direct where you begin, and our course will take them from there! Consider it a prerequisite for Intermediate that the child knows how to peel vegetables, cut with a dull knife, and measure accurately. To move to Advanced, a child must have some experience with sharp knives and the stove, as well as cracking eggs and reading a recipe on their own. Lots of foundational skills at the Intermediate Level!
If you have a child 8 or older and you’d like them to work through some lessons independently, consider the Kids Cook Solo independent training program, which is available by itself or as part of our VIP membership.
Yes. In the terms and conditions it says it’s ok to teach any number of children. You may copy the memory tools for them but not the entire recipe eBook or lesson plans, and you can’t share the videos except for viewing them. This is awesome for inviting neighbors or cousins over to your house and also applies to homeschool co-ops where many families get together.
The only thing members don’t have permission for is teaching others for-profit. That’s a separate For-Profit License.
If you’re part of a homeschool co-op or learning pod, you might be interested in our group discount on a three-month membership.
The eCourse is very allergy-friendly and provides many substitutions for special diets! The beauty of this course is that the focus is on the skills, not the recipes. If someone in your family can’t or won’t eat an ingredient we use in the demonstrated recipe, it’s easy to swap it out for another recipe and still practice the same cooking skill. There is a section in every lesson plan with ideas for allergies and substitutions of many kinds.
For example, we make ranch and Italian – the sour cream base for the ranch wouldn’t work for a dairy allergy or vegan, but kids could still make Italian, so the skill still gets appropriate practice. Our pancake and muffin recipes use eggs, but an egg-sensitive family could easily practice the skills of flipping pancakes and making a recipe all by oneself with any favorite pancake or muffin recipe.
As long as the children won’t be traumatized by their experience not matching the videos exactly (we have a sensitive type here at the Kimball household, so I know how that can go), you should feel confident embarking on the course with any dietary restriction.
Here are some individual breakdowns so you can see how much you might have to adapt:
- Nuts: There are no nuts in the class recipes, and the one activity that uses peanut butter in a central way has many other options to practice the same skill.
- Gluten: All the recipes except two are already gluten-free, and both of those have GF alternative recipes, although that may shift the skill a little bit.
- Dairy: Many skills of the 30 already fit a dairy-free diet, and the few that don’t are fairly easy to adapt. Suggestions provided in the lesson plans.
- Grain-free/Paleo: One skill at each age level does not fit a Paleo diet: two that have to do with legumes and one about cooking rice. Adaptations are included in the notes to switch up the lesson completely. Other than that, one other skill at each level will need to be adapted to use a different recipe but the same/similar skill. (See the Curriculum Map above for a more in-depth look at all the lessons.)
- Eggs: Eggs are pretty central in about 2 out of the 24 lessons. There’s just no substitute for eggs when the skill you’re teaching is “cracking eggs” or “cooking scrambled eggs.” I still think the course would be worthwhile for kids with egg allergies – they’d only have to substitute 2 lessons max.
- Sugar: There is very little sweetener of any kind in the course, and you can use natural sweeteners like sucanat or honey or substitute your own recipes for muffins if you like.
- Vegan: All the skills in the Beginner Level apply fine to vegans, although 2 recipes would need adaptations. Two skills (eggs and ground meat) at the Intermediate Level would need replacements; suggestions provided in the materials. Two skills at the Advanced Level (cooking eggs and a white sauce) would also need replacements or adaptations (a dairy-free white sauce for example). I’d say that if there are 30 skills taught, only about 4 of them relate specifically to animal products.
If you have other allergies, feel free to email a question to support@kidscookrealfood.com and I’ll get back to you ASAP. If you get the VIP level with Facebook support version, I’d be able to help you find suitable allergy-friendly recipes to fit your needs for each skill as you work through the course.
I assure you that safety is a top priority in the lessons and videos, and a lot of our initial time teaching knife skills and working at the stove is spent on safety. There’s no guarantee that accidents won’t happen, but walking carries some risk too, yet we all manage to do it and let our kids do it as well. 😉
I’ll let a happy member tell you in her own words about her experience with safety:
“My kids can safely work at the stove! THANK YOU! I have always been too afraid to go there and you gave me and my kiddos the right info we needed to do it safely.”
Not really. There’s a supply list with every single item you’ll need for all 27 lessons, and it’s barely over a page of large text and includes items like “butter knife” and “large mixing bowl.” Most homes will have 90% of what we use already, and we recommend resources to purchase if you don’t.
One necessary item for Intermediate and Advanced Level kids is a knife that fits your child’s hands. Any paring knife will do for the Intermediate Level, but the Advanced kids use a chef’s knife. You should have access to a sharp chef’s knife that’s no longer than 6 inches in length for best success with smaller hands (or something like a 4-inch Victorinox knife that can be used on many chef’s knife tasks). See our resources page for easy order links and ideas.
The course is completely at your own pace, any time you’d like to login.
You can request emails once a week for about 9 weeks as if the course was live and weekly, just a way to help keep you accountable and remind you that you have this awesome course at your disposal. You can stop and start those weekly reminders over anytime.
Every class includes :
5 Videos:
- An introductory video for adults explaining the lesson’s skill(s), how to present them in kid-friendly language, and some possible challenges you’ll want to be ready for.
- An all-kid video for kids at any age or skill level to watch. Each of the all-kid videos introduces a skill that everyone can learn.
- One video at each age/skill level, ranging in time from 3-22 minutes. If you have single level access, you’ll just have one of these. Otherwise, you’ll be able to watch all three or skip ones that are outside of your child(s) skill level or come back to them later.
There are also 4 “Foundations 101” video lessons to establish basic skills before embarking on the course, and if you’re a VIP member, there’s a bonus 4-video Hospitality Class too.
Single Level access includes the Adult Guide and All-Kid videos, plus the level you chose.
Written materials in each lesson:
- A recap of what’s in the Adult Guide videos for those who would rather skim + planning helps for the All-Kid lesson and tips for teaching multiple age groups at once.
- For those that like to plan out reeeeally thoroughly, there is an extensive lesson plan for each module level (usually 4-10 pages each). The day’s plan, supplies needed at a glance, extensions to practice the skill plus adaptations for allergies and more.
- Printable memory tools to help the kids (and parents!) remember the important key phrases in each lesson. There are 1-4 “Flash Cards” for each lesson plus a “Daily Nugget” card with the factoid nutrition lesson for the day.
- A 50-page recipe eBook in kid-friendly language and font size for all the recipes demonstrated in the videos and mentioned in the lesson plans. (VIP members also receive a second “Extension” recipe eBook with more recipes for kids to practice their cooking skills from class.)
Starting when you receive access to the course (immediately after purchase), you’ll have 30 days to try out the course in your kitchen.
If you’re not completely happy with the classes for any reason, you’ll get a full refund within the first 30 days. Please send an email to membership@knowewell.com with your account and order information.