By GWENDOLYN WEILER
Moapa Valley Progress
Jean Gottschalk stands in front of a small whiteboard at the Moapa Valley Cooperative Extension on Wednesday, July 11. He is making a list of pizza ingredients as children call out their favorite pizza toppings. Tonight, it’s his turn to teach the 4H Cloverbuds Cooking Club class.
Northeast Clark County 4H Program Coordinator, Lacey Sproul says this club marks the first time that the local 4H program has utilized the co-op model, in which a different parent teaches the class each time. The class meets once a month during the summer, which means most of the five children participating this year will have a parent in rotation before the class ends in August.
Sproul said she likes the co-op model because it means the stress of managing the class doesn’t lie with just one person. Sproul is used to standing at the front of the class and teaching. But she was happy to take a seat and cuddle her two-week old baby while one of the parents took a turn.
Gottschalk was no exception. He attended and taught Wednesday’s pizza demonstration even though his 7-year-old daughter, Sophia, wasn’t able to come on that occasion.
Gottschalk said he chose pizza because it was an age-appropriate activity for the class, and he happened to have a box of 24 balls of pizza dough at home.
Participant James “Pirate” Garcia, 11, was grateful not to have to make the crust from scratch. “Yay! We don’t have to spend 20 years making dough!” Garcia said.
The cooking class is designed to teach the Cloverbuds, ages 5 to 8, the basic safety skills of the kitchen, said Sproul. In May, the children learned basic measurements. In June, they made granola and practiced cutting fruits and vegetables. In July, they made their own pizzas. And in August, they will learn to make edible play dough.
Payton Paice, 8, from Overton said she is excited to learn to cook. “I got to use a knife!” she said.
Her grandmother, Lorrie Paice, said she enrolled Payton in the class because she knew it would interest her. “She watches all the cooking shows on TV,” Lorrie said.
Sproul said the goal of all 4H programs is to teach life skills. “They’re each meant to be a vessel of positive youth development,” Sproul said.
The Cloverbuds cooking club will come to an end next month. But eventually, the local 4H program would like to host a cooking club throughout the school year for children ages 8 to 18, Sproul said.
Sproul anticipates the 4H program will use this co-op model for that and other classes in the future, including the 4H Chess Club currently being proposed.
“Every person brings their own unique skill to the table,” Sproul said. “When the parents teach, the kids coming get a little more involved and take a little more ownership for the program.”
