A six-year-old can tell you, in great detail, exactly how to make pancakes. Ask the same child to write it down and you will get three words and a drawing of a pancake.
That is not because they have nothing to say. It is because writing, at this age, is two jobs at once: composing the sentence and forming every letter of it. The second job eats all the attention the first one needs.
Recipe to Write K–2 separates the two. Your child composes. You hold the pencil.
Dictation is real writing
I want to say this plainly because many parents feel it is cheating. It is not. Children compose long before they can transcribe, and dictation lets them do the real work, putting ideas in an order someone else can follow, without the physical act getting in the way. Write down exactly what they say, including the parts that are wrong. Then read it back and see if it works.
And a drawn answer is a real answer at this age.
Why a recipe?
This looks like a cookbook. It is a writing curriculum.
A recipe is the most testable writing there is. An essay can be vague and still pass. A recipe cannot. Hand it to someone, watch them stop and ask what you meant, and you have found the exact sentence that failed. Even a five-year-old understands that test.
The writing ladder
Four units, each climbing one rung:
- Order. First this, then that. Pancakes teach sequence better than any worksheet.
- Naming things. The whisk, the bowl, the flour. Not “that thing.”
- Describing words. Golden, bubbly, sticky, soft.
- Telling it so someone can do it. The whole recipe, told to someone who has never made it.
The Fourfold Method in kitchen clothing
Every unit runs the four moves of the Fourfold Method (The Fourfold Method) under kitchen names: Gather, Measure, Fold In, Serve. Each one has a drawing box. Your child gathers what they need, measures and tries it, folds in what they already know, and serves it back in their own words.
What’s inside
- Four units: pancakes, cookies, cornbread, and soup
- The writing ladder above
- Science and history pages written for young children, with drawing space
- Books to read together
- Gather, Measure, Fold In, Serve pages with drawing boxes
- A page for you in every unit, written to the parent
- Kitchen safety and an allergy page
- A recipe section in larger type for reading at a counter
Cook with older siblings
The same recipes run through all five volumes of Recipe to Write, from K–2 through high school. Your kindergartener and your eighth grader can make the same cornbread on the same afternoon and each write at their own level. One kitchen, one mess, several lessons.
Get Recipe to Write K–2
74 printable pages, 8.5 by 11, black and white for a home printer. Your family license covers every child in your household, every year.
This is a first edition. If a unit does not work with your little one, tell us. We will build the best suggestions into the next edition, and every purchase includes free updates to future editions.
Get Recipe to Write: Grades K–2
Gina Glenn Steffy
Pair it with
Night Zookeeper: writing practice that feels like a game
Recipe to Write gives your child real lessons at the kitchen table. Night Zookeeper keeps the pencil moving between them. Kids write stories, poems and reports inside an online world they help build, and a real tutor sends written feedback on their work, so you don’t have to be the bad guy. It covers reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation for Grades 1 to 6, and there’s a free trial so you can see if your child takes to it.
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Lisa Nehring and her husband, Dr. David Nehring, a Clinical Psychologist, and Biblical Scholar speak together on a wide variety of topics, including education, classical education, vision, mission, parenting, marriage, and more.
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