Playing With Food : Museum program makes working in the kitchen fun for youngsters.

Kids in the kitchen? For some parents--probably most--this is a daunting thing to think about. They fear the mess and the spills, or, even worse, they fear kids will do exactly what some adults do in the kitchen: succumb to the temptation of all things fattening.

However, for Leana Bowman, a mother of four, the idea of kids in the kitchen is an educational concept. As the new director of the Gull Wings Children’s Museum in Oxnard, this summer she launched a series of Thursday afternoon food-preparation lessons for kids ages 3 to 12.

“Kids don’t get to play with food at home, to experiment,” she says. So she set out to give kids what she thinks will be “the first time they’ll get to make something to eat, the first time doing it without Mom nagging them about making a mess.”

The program introduces kids to the cuisines of several cultures by teaching them what Bowman calls “creative snacks” or “edible crafts.” Even a bit of health-food consciousness is involved. “But we’re not fanatics about it,” she says.

One example of where ethnic, healthy and creative come together is on days when kids make Middle Eastern-style shish kebab.

“We sometimes use chicken nuggets instead of our original idea of hot dog slices. The kids then put this together with cheese, pineapple and other things.”

In all cases, the parts of the dish that require cooking on a stove, such as the meat ingredients for Mexican-style snacks, are made ahead by the museum staff.

The kids learn only “very rudimentary kitchen skills,” Bowman explains. What they really do is assemble the final dishes.

“They can’t wait,” she says. “There’s such anticipation because they can’t wait to eat it.”

For this reason, parents are well-advised to get their kids to these events promptly at 4 p.m., because most of the fun happens at the top of the hour.

Indeed, the program has become so popular that Bowman is considering offering it an additional day of the week.

Some of the ideas for snack projects come from Felicia Salinas, a museum staff member who is studying child development at Ventura College.

Researching recipes for kids on the Internet, Salinas discovered concoctions such as “peanut butter caterpillars” and something called “bubble solution.” And there were some recipes she could connect with the themes of exhibits at the museum. For example, kids created a sort of miniature diorama out of guacamole topped with animal crackers--then they ate it.

Another recipe involved crumbled Oreo cookies, chocolate pudding and chopped gummy-candy snakes, producing something the kids gleefully called “dirt.” “Chex muddy buddies” were also popular with the young cooks.

Although the names of the dishes are sometimes alarming, Bowman says the kids “are very clean about putting [the food] together. It’s the eating part that’s messy. As a Mom with four kids, I know why parents bring ‘em here to make a mess.”

BE THERE

“Kids in the Kitchen,” for ages 3-12, Thursdays, 4-5 p.m., Gull Wings Children’s Museum, 418 W. 4th St., Oxnard. Museum admission $3.30; ingredients are provided. (805) 483-3005.