I love everything related to food! (It might be my real passion.) I love reading cookbooks, watching TV cooking shows, experimenting with recipes, planning dinner parties, browsing through specialty food stores, listening to food-based podcasts (LOVE America’s Test Kitchen) and acquiring all sorts of cooking gadgets and appliances. My most recent purchase was a pizza stone and pizza peel so that I could finally master the perfect, crispy thin-crust home-made pizza!
So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I combine cooking with AAC Intervention. For the past 6 months, I’ve been compiling easy-to-make recipes and “coring them out” as a strategy for teaching core vocabulary, as well as the pragmatic function of directing others. During the cooking activity, I state the original direction and then “core it out” so that the students can tell someone what to do. “Preheat the oven” becomes “make it hot before you put things in.” And “evenly spread it across the top” becomes “put the same all over the top.” Fruit Pizza is one example of what I’ve done!
Many of my recipes are tried and true family favorites. My nieces and nephews will gobble up a batch of “Crocodile Bars” and my sister-in-law will light up when she hears I’ve made “Milk Dud Torte” for Sunday lunch dessert. A while back, I brought a dozen “Pistachio Energy Bites” for the lifeguards who watch over me during my early morning swim – and they were gone before I finished my laps! During AAC Intervention, the students and staff members have all enjoyed being part of a session when cooking has been involved. Cooking with Core is a very motivating strategy for communication partner training!
Do you use cooking with students as part of your AAC intervention? If you do, I would love to hear from you. What are some of your favorite recipes? Share them with me and I’ll core them out for you! (Already – Thank you to Karen Kangas for sharing your Apple Cake recipe with me. It is fabulous and so easy!)
I can’t wait to hear how you are Cooking with Core in your AAC intervention!
Gail Van Tatenhove 
This is FANTASTIC!! I’m always looking for resources to demonstrate the use and power of core vocabulary. I will be sharing this post!!! It is perfect!
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My contribution:
Easy Guacamole (add pics)
Cut it open. (avocado)
Scoop it out.
Get it all.
Mash it up.
Put salt in.
Put pepper in.
Cut it open. (lemon)
Twist it around.
Pour it in.
Stir it up.
Optional:
Put some in. (salsa)
Maybe even add:
Dip it in. (chip)
Spread it on. (tortilla)
Eat it all up.
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Thanks for the recipe and for coring it out. For students who don’t have “scoop,” “mash” or “twist” in their bank of available verbs, I might replace scoop with take, and add mash and twist to their vocabulary banks, especially if the PWUAAC needs to direct caregivers to mash his/her food or twist something, like a knob on the wheelchair or mounting system. They could easily be verbs that are used frequently enough to be considered core to the person’s daily care. Thanks again for sharing!
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“Scoop” is a great word, though, since most people love ice cream!
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Hi Gail-
Love this. I have a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. Can you core it out for me? Should I email you the recipe?
I did a lasagna with a different PWUAAC last week and was so fun. We didn’t focus on core, but more pre-stored messages (brain-injury).
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Thank you so much. My cooking activities have been limited to icing cookies and making coke-floats. I think you may be extending me cooking skills too. 😜
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At the end of the year, I hope to post all 24 of my 2015 recipes.
In 2016, I thinking might do a Culinary Book club, selecting a children’s book for the month, and 2 recipes to coordinate with the book. Language and literacy go together like peanut butter and jelly.
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