Teaching Kids How to Make Pancakes,...

… that was my Saturday. Not bad at all considering I was being paid to do it as well!

The private language school I work for has an extra-curricular “club” program whereby children have a Saturday class once every few weeks. The program is all about learning new things and having fun in an environment speaking only English, but there is no focus on teaching grammar patterns or anything like that.

So far, I’ve taught one “Words in Songs” class (not that much fun), one “Little Picasso” class (lots of painting, kids enjoyed it, and this weekend the theme topic was “Little Chef”. The teachers guide recommended teaching the students how to make spaghetti. Instead, I opted to teach them how to make pancakes.

After discussing what ingredients were required, my branch were kind enough to collect everything that was necessary for the class and they even brought in two portable gas stoves because the branch kitchen is currently only equipped with a microwave and toaster oven.

To start with I had the students come up to the front, introduce themselves to the class and tell everyone what their favorite food is. Predictably, this inevitably resulted in a few students declaring, “My favorite food is poo-poo!” Haha, very funny kids... NOT! Thereafter, I gave the kids a quick and serious talking to about the importance of washing hands and what they can and can’t touch after they have washed their hands. Wish all that covered, we then jumped right into making the batter. I had the students pair up and work in twos.

Step by step I walked them through mixing the dry ingredients together, then the wet ingredients, and then everything combined. In the second hour we started cooking. Kids, gas stoves and scolding hot oil don’t mix, and so it was my Taiwanese co-teacher and I that did the cooking. All went well and there was an array of toppings for the kids to choose from: bananas, peach slices, pineapple slices, cream, honey, butter, chocolate chips, and peanut butter.

I had originally planned to make "American Pancakes" (of the thicker and smaller style), but we were quite short on baking powder and so, not expecting the batter to rise very much in the pan, I ended up choosing to make Dutch style pancakes which are larger, flatter and rolled (or folded) before eating.

It was pretty torturous standing in front of the stove cooking pancake after pancake, only to see them taken away, smothered in delicious toppings and then gorged on by hungry and eager kids. Very luckily, I was allowed to take home the left over batter and toppings. So Amanda and I will be having some homemade dessert later tonight.

The students really enjoyed making the pancakes, but even more so enjoyed eating them. I certainly wouldn’t mind doing another class where I had to teach them how to cook something else. Enchiladas, next time, perhaps.

Photo from Flickr user Gilmoth