One night a week, 11-year-old Michael Jansa makes dinner for his family of five. Another night, it's the turn of his nine-year-old sister, Anne. For the past year and a half, each Portland, Oregon preteen has had the once-a-week job of planning the family meal, cooking it with Mom and cleaning up afterward.

Sound too good to be true? Not to Fran Henry-Jansa, who started teaching her kids to cook when she decided to go back to work last fall. "We're a family, and we all have to work together. I'm a great believer in kids pulling their weight."

Not that Michael cares about that. He's just surprised and delighted by his new ability. "For a person like me who likes sports, I never thought cooking would be fun," says the sixth grader who makes spaghetti, barbecued chicken, corn bread (from a mix) and--his specialty--mashed potatoes. In his attempt to speed up his chores, he even discovered a quicker way to make mashed potatoes by baking them, scooping out the insides and then mashing them. And in the process he discovered a delicious by-product: baked potato skins.

There's nothing new about children learning to cook. What's new is how they are learning. They used to be taught by their mothers, as the Jansa children were. But now that so many mothers are working, professionals are increasingly taking over the task. Educators do it because they believe cooking is a skill that helps children read, do math and organize their work logically. And food professionals do it because they fear that if they don't, cooking will die out in a society that increasingly just eats out and orders in, says Brian Dougherty, director of education for the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

The number of published kids' cookbooks rose to 51 in 1995, more than double over the previous five years. Two years ago, the Cooking Together Foundation was formed in Washington, D.C., to promote cooking with kids. About the same time, members of the International Association of Culinary Professionals formed the Kids in the Kitchen Network. Since then, they've produced a directory and guide to cooking events and resources around the country, including an extensive bibliography of cookbooks and pamphlets. (For information about the Network and its directory, e-mail questions to IACP@aye.net.) And for the fourth year in a row, food professionals will go into California elementary schools this month to cook with children in a program sponsored by the Department of Education, the Dairy Council and the American Institute of Wine and Food.

The Jansa children are proof that being able to cook involves more than mixing and sifting. Every time Anne Jansa looks through her mother's cookbooks for recipe ideas, measures ingredients or follows a recipe, she's strengthening her reading, math and motor skills. This year, she even produced a cookbook of her favorite recipes for a class project.

Making shopping lists and planning a meal so everything is done at the same time teaches cooperation, organization and good work habits. Washing hands before you cook and scrubbing cutting boards after you're done teaches hygiene. Watching boiling water turn to steam or batter turn to cake helps kids experience science firsthand. And there's nothing like seeing someone eat every last bit of what you've cooked for them to teach self-esteem and the fact that hard work pays off.

In addition, learning to make ethnic dishes can teach children their own food traditions, introduce them to other cultures and improve their eating habits, says Ginny Callan, who cooks with her children Callie, eight, and Carter, five, in Vermont. Callan, former chef of a vegetarian restaurant and the author of the BEYOND THE MOON COOKBOOK (HarperCollins) takes her children to markets, especially farmers' markets, as a way of teaching them about new foods.

She believes (as most nutritionists do) that a sure way to get a child to try a new food is for the child help make it. Callan went to her children's school to demonstrate Middle Eastern cooking. When she said she was going to make falafel, one boy declared, "I won't even try it." But after he helped to make the falafel, he ate five of the fried ground chickpea balls that are a popular snack in the Middle East.

Callan recommends starting children with baking because "kids like the magic of seeing things change in the oven." She says Callie and Carter often stand before the glass window of the oven door because they like to watch the muffins rise or the cookies firm up. (And probably because they can't wait to taste the sweets they made: another reason to start with baking.)

Once kids start cooking, it's hard to stop them. The Dickey-Griffiths, friends of the Jansa family, were so impressed with their plan that Meg, 10, and David, 12, each chose a night to help with dinner. So far, their repertoire is limited to spaghetti, boxed macaroni and cheese, frozen pizza and canned tomato soup enhanced with rice and tuna, but they have plans for more from-scratch meals.

And back at the Jansa's, kid brother Patrick, seven, is watching his siblings carefully, because when he goes into second grade next fall, he'll get his own night to cook.