Making Salad for Your Guests
The Merge Sort Algorithm Birthday Party
February 2, 2019
Planting a Garden as a Little Computational Gardener
February 5, 2019Encourage Your Child To Make Salad while Applying Design Thinking
Are you ready to teach your children empathy to make salad for your guest?
How long?
40 minutes
What's the Learning Outcome?
Sequencing
Algorithm
Brainstorming
Empathy
Prototyping
What age is it for?
6-9 year olds
What You'll Need
- You and your child
- Lettuce
- Tomato
- Cucumber
- Cheese
- Butter
- Salt
- Knife
- Olive Oil
- Lemon
- Sticky notes
- Marker
How to Play
There is something about having guests at home that step up to make a delicious salad for lunch or dinner.
Maybe it’s the desire to prove that you know what you are doing in the kitchen.
Allow your children to emphasize, prototype, and make delicious salad. Invite guests to test for user experience. Let your child interview your guest, try making salad, and then serve for your guests.
Step 1: Having back and forth conversation with your guests
Encurage your child to ask several questions your guests to understand what kind of salad they like.
Allow your child to take notes a piece of paper to remember while making salad. Provide sticky notes and marker him/her.
Step 2: Time to brainstorm with family members!
Before letting your child start making salad, brainstorm with him/her.
Follow your child’s lead to assist and have a conversation for salad making process.
Ask your child open-ended questions. For example, what is the sequence of ingredients to add in the bowl?
Step 3: Creating the Algorithm
Tell your child to explain verbally or written how he/she will making salad even before starting the process.
In addition, observe your child whether he/she create the right algorithm. If she/he is following different sequencing. Ask follow up question for the main reason.
For example, did he/she add olive oil even your guests don't prefer olive oil?
Step 4: Testing!
When your child finish making salad, let your guests try! Ask your child about their brainstorming experience. Was it easy? Was it challenging?
Also, challenge them to think through what they could do to improve their salad better. Was it the easier to make salad for guests. Is there another way to emphasize to understand what guests' like or dislike? What was the challenges he/she had?
Next week, let him/her try making the same kind of salad again to see if he/she can be better than this week.
Bekir M.
Doctorate in Education
Originally from Turkey, then Pittsburgh, now California
I got my doctorate in educating children how to code, and how to think computationally so they can thrive in STEM. I have been researching how Offline Activities -- where children aren't in front of a screen, but are playing in the real world -- can help children get core concepts of coding.
Learning Outcome
This fun activity teaches your child to understand empathy when he/she is making salad for their guests. They also experiment process of brainstorming the ideas, defining problems, and prototyping the salad. Therefore, he/she thinks about the process and outcome so that he/she is able to explore design thinker's steps of prototyping.