The Benefits of Cooking with Kids
..
Most children like to imitate adults, so why not take this opportunity to bring your child to the kitchen and learn important skills through cooking. Read more about the benefits of cooking with kids and the reasons you should get your children involved in the kitchen, whether they’re 3 or 13.
Cooking is an interesting and multi-sensory activity. It helps children of all ages develop cognitive skills and abilities. Through cooking, children can learn to follow instructions, solve problems and make predictions and observations. Cooking is a great opportunity for children to understand and apply their knowledge of mathematics, science, and language. Children can be encouraged to count or measure the ingredients, observe the changing forms of food, or even read a recipe while they are helping to prepare a dish.
Most children love to help in the kitchen and can start as early as age two. It’s a terrific way to encourage healthy eating habits while you bond with your child and create lasting memories.
Helps in making Healthy Choices
Involving kids in the process of cooking, be it picking watermelons, tomatoes, or plucking herbs to be added in a salad, significantly increases the chances that they would like to try the finished dish. Kids are curious by birth and try to find the answer to any question. Why have they been asked for tomatoes, what difference will it make, how would it taste, can help moms to make their child new dishes and engage in a healthy lifestyle. Experts say that the single most important thing you can do for your health is to cook at home. Inviting children into the kitchen and involving them at a very young age fosters a habit that will have lifelong benefits. Also, it gives you an opportunity to discuss with a 3-year-old how fish can help make you smart, how “eating a rainbow” ensures that you get a wide variety of vitamins and minerals, and how eating plenty of fresh vegetables and drinking lots of water will “keep your poop from hurting when it comes out.”
Language Development
Working side by side with you in the kitchen can build the foundation of early literacy. It helps your kid develop communication skills, learning new terminology, and learn to follow instructions diligently. It gives your kid an opportunity to describe what they see and taste as they blend, shred and slice together. We recommend you use illustrated cookbooks and recipe cards to help your child match picture with words and encourage to ask more questions in the process.
Develop Mathematical skills
Cooking involves a great deal of measurement. Involving kids help in learning various measurement such as teaspoons, tablespoons, a cup. Interestingly all the mathematical operations can be easily learned while cooking. Fractions, addition, the subtraction will become a piece of cake for your child while cooking.
Claire, a Florida mom, told us that she came to know the relation between a tablespoon and teaspoon when she was watching an American Quiz Game Show “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?”. Can you imagine how cooking can help your child in learning so much about a small thing that we generally ignore but matters a lot in your cognitive development?
Fundamental introduction to Scientific Concepts
The kitchen is like a mini “Science Lab”. Children can watch materials change color, texture, and form (liquids, solids, gases) and they can make predictions and observations. Kid learn what happens when certain ingredients are mixed what as well happens when the measurement is incorrect, e.g. what happens if you use too much/little baking powder, wrong temperatures, etc.
Build Relationship
A kitchen is a great place for parents to spend quality time with their children. It can be a place to talk about family traditions, through passed down family recipes, or it can simply be a place just to catch up with the day to day life. It is also a great environment for siblings to cooperate and communicate, building stronger relationships. Make it a routine to cook Sunday dinner together each week or turn Friday night in to make your own pizza night. You can also play your own version of “Chopped.”
Encourage your kids to watch Cooking shows with. Leaning by watching a great way to indulge kids in development activities. In fact, a new study published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, suggests that children aged 10 to 12 are nearly three times more likely to make healthy eating decisions after watching TV cooking shows featuring healthy food. Reason enough to get them started young. There are, of course, loads of cooking shows about, but there’s a difference between a show that makes kids excited about the world of nutrition and one where Gordon Ramsay keeps shouting at people until they cry.
Cookie Monster’s Foodie Truck
This is the most popular YouTube show of the era. Every episode works to a formula – they receive a request from a kid (or occasionally a celebrity – Zooey Deschanel, Ellie Kemper, and Jenny Slate have all made appearances), visit the farm it’s grown on, put everything together, and launch the finished product. It’s amazing to watch with Kids.
This is a popular YouTube show, hosted by a pair of young Australian sisters who make fairly healthy food about half of the time and ridiculous stuff the other half.
The Kids Menu is a documentary available on Netflix about how healthy eating, especially in childhood, is very important. The Kids Menu uses a more upbeat approach: It shows kids and schools making positive changes with food and nutrition as part of their education. Whether it’s a school-garden-to-table program or kids working to get healthier lunch choices in their school cafeteria, this is such a great documentary for families with younger kids that will help foster an appreciation for real food and maybe some activism too.
SIMILAR READS: Gardening with Kids – A Great Way for a Healthy Start
When your child is involved in cooking, you must expect that it will take longer than usual! Pick a time when cooking and eating will not be rushed. Try to make dishes that are simple, so that your child can manage to take part in most of the preparation tasks. Most importantly, before you and your child get started, you should consider potential risks and be aware of safety in the kitchen.
