Sizzle Kidz is………
Learn About Food, Learn About Health, Learn to Cook, Skill by Skill
Sizzle Kidz is a skills-based, food, nutrition & cooking curriculum that teaches kids about food, health, recipes and how to cook from the ground up. Each child gets their own consumable and fun workbook that covers 4 weeks, at least 12 skills, 8 ingredients and 8 cool things to make. Along the way, your child learns A LOT of cool science, math, geography, history, nutrition and healthy living. By the end of the 4 weeks, your child will learn a ton and will have a ton of fun!
HOW DID SIZZLE KIDZ BEGIN??
It all started because I have 3 boys that I call my “Wolf Pack”. They are currently 13, 9, & 6. I decided that as a mom of boys, these little pups were going to leave the nest someday knowing how to do more in the kitchen than boil water and make Ramen! Most materials I found were kids cookbooks or recipe-based programs, which were great, but my boys didn’t really like or care about food, so making food was not fun for them and they couldn’t care less. I still wanted them to learn about food and nutrition!
So I started teaching them about fun facts, dissecting foods, nutrition and how to use food for healthy energy, and just simple little things about how to cook. Now, speaking only for myself, my experience is that my boys did not naturally gravitate towards the kitchen fun unless they were shown what to do, were asked to do something, or were required to do something! This was different for me growing up with just my mom and sister. We just somehow learned and I can’t remember how, it just happened by hanging around mom in the kitchen.
The other reason we started Sizzle Kidz is because it has taken me, my whole adult life to learn about food and nutrition. I was a super active athlete growing up so I never really learned about nutrition, I could eat anything and still do well in sports, keep fit. That changed when I stopped the competitive sports and I felt like I had to start from scratch learning how to maintain good nutrition, health and weight. I struggle to this day with good nutrition being the normal and I struggle with weight after 3 kids, even though I know all the things! It just wasn’t ingrained in me from a young age. So I thought…”What if the kiddos learned about food and nutrition and what fueled their bodies from a young age instead of having to learn it as an adult?” And that’s how Sizzle Kidz was born.
Cut to my life now, my boys weren’t hanging around me learning all those little things that I just naturally picked up in the kitchen. They much prefer to be on the roof…or the trampoline…or battling each other with Nerf guns…or…you get the picture. Also, strangely, all 3 boys eat like birds and do not care about food AT ALL. Unless it is Skittles. They care about those.
So I started to try to teach them little things, then bigger things, make it fun, make it easy and bite-sized. Then I started adding some geography facts, or a math problem, or ask them to write down some culinary reaction (think rising yeast). And I thought up SIZZLE KIDZ as a skills-based curriculum to learn about food, health, cooking and the world.
I still struggled with getting them to eat healthy balanced meals, but in creating our SIZZLE KIDZ program and workbooks, we have started down the path of learning healthy eating, basic cooking, interesting and useful nutrition and body facts. We are turning the “food struggle” and “picky-eating”, into a fun thing where the boys learn how to take care of their own nutrition, choose healthy lifestyles, and someday be able to make more than Ramen for their college roommates!
We will be updating the Blog here with videos and posts on all of our techniques and ideas so please subscribe. Our first Workbook, “Apples & Artichokes” will be available soon!
Thank you and I hope to see you back here soon!
What do you think?