Kids Safe at Home With Super Star Chef Program

In the summer, the Carroll County Extension Office hosted the Super Star Chef Program, a group of four dynamic and enthusiastic UK and Eastern Kentucky University students conducted this program for four days, all the kids wanted to enroll in this amazing and instructional program. 

The mission of Super Star Chef is to provide a fun and educational environment for youth to gain knowledge and learn skills leading to successful preparations in the kitchen.  This hands-on cooking school covers safety in the kitchen, nutritional facts, cooking techniques, and dietary information to assist youth in making good choices for a healthy lifestyle. Understanding the science behind a recipe and its processes helps lead to a delicious outcome making kids use their skills in reading, science and math. They learn ways to integrate fruits and vegetables to their diets since almost 50% of Kentuckians struggle to provide a healthy diet to their kids. 

A week before the program started, two Hispanic children who have enrolled in the program, were worried because when school is off and their parents have to go to work they babysit their younger siblings. Juan is only six and Yareli eight, this program is for children 9 to 17 years old. 

The Carroll County Extension Office staff and Super Star Chef students talked about the issue, and in order to help the kids attend the program, we agreed on accepting both, Juan 6, and Yarely 8, and thought of giving them easy chores. 

To our surprise little Juan and Yareli were very attentive and when cutting and preparing they indeed had skills!

A few days later, after the program had finished, Yareli’s mom sent a note thanking us for everything her kids learned and that she feels less worry when she is not home, they will not go hungry because she knows they can cook at home now safely. 

Juan’s mom sent a thank you note and pictures. She said she is very grateful for everything their kids learned at the Super Star Chef Program. She wrote, “Watching my kids writing down the list of ingredients they needed for the recipe, taking them to shop and preparing everything to make and bake bread it is beyond anything I dreamt of my children doing and at that short age! I do not have words to tell you how impressed and proud I am of my children and all thanks to you.