When I recently wrote in response to a reader's lack of joy, I mentioned adding something into her day that would appeal to her. Something to look forward to in all the necessary doings of the day.

For me, it's cooking. More specifically, it's baking. I dream in bread, cakes, pies, and crème brûlée (who doesn't dream in crème brûlée?) Lucky for me, baking is a science and so I have planned a whole season's worth of science lessons that have me in the kitchen with my kids during our slotted science hour.

When it dawned on me that we could use our two science mornings as our cooking course, I began to see a world of possibilities open to me. I also began to get excited and look forward to our science days, about which I had tended to feel rather ho-hum in the past.

We began with a cooking lapbook because I wanted to train my kids from the ground up. A while ago, I had made cooking binders for them in anticipation of a summer cooking course I was going to teach. But babies came instead, one summer after the other, and our cooking course never happened.

So I organized my materials and set out to have a whole lot of fun. How neat is it that we also end up producing a meal or a snack in the process?

If a cooking/science/chemistry unit sounds good to you, too, I say go for it. These are some of the resources we're using:

Online:

Family Fun Cooking With Kids

America's Test Kitchen Videos Online

The Art of Bread Making

Our Favorite Cookbooks for Kids:
{affiliate links}

Pretend Soup

Paula Deen's My First Cookbook

Yum-O! The Family Cookbook

My Favorite Cooking Blogs:

Eggs on Sunday