Toddlers cooking? Oh yes! (Big Cook Little Cook)

Member Name: bruffyboy

Product:	Big Cook Little Cook
Date:	31/01/09 (60 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: promotes some good values

Disadvantages: wastes food

THE PREMISE:
Big Cook Little Cook is a children's TV show about making 'cooking' fun. The back story is that Big Cook Ben and Little Cook Small (who is about the size of a pencil) run a cafe, and cook meals for their customers. However, each meal is something creative, simple and fun, for young viewers to try at home.

DETAILS:
Each episode is 18 minutes long, available any time on the BBC Iplayer.

THE GOOD:
Through a range of songs and catch-phrases, the show encourages good 'kitchen' values such as washing up, tidying away, and always getting an adult to do the cooker bits because it's 'hot hot hot'.

The set is very bright and colourful, and the camera tricks that show big and small together make it fun for kids to watch.

THE BAD:
Sadly, 95% of the 'dshies' they promote on the show are not edible, just visually interesting. For example, on today's show they made a shark. The shark was basically made of a full length cucumber cut in two, with rich in the middle, Samosas for fins, and olives for eyes. This is pretty much the general gist of the show: whilst it's fun to watch and creative to make, no-one wants to eat a meal of one whole cucumber, two olives and a samosa.

IN CONCLUSION:
This show should be praised for its promotion of getting in the kitchen, keeping things safe, clean and tidy. However, the bizarre 'dishes' fail to promote other values such as not wasting a whole cucumber on a weird shark sculpture.

IF YOU LIKED IT:
The show is more akin to a lot of art shows, and promotes artistic talent over anything else, so try some kiddies art shows on CBBC or CITV.

Summary: enjoyable but not practical