Cooking With Children
Fun Filled Plus Benefits!

We love cooking with children and working with our kids using a 'hand on hand' approach with guiding interactive conversations filled with encouraging praise. Toddlers love to lend a helping hand in almost all areas of family life as they learn to explore their own independence.

You can start as soon as your toddler shows an interest in helping you with some of the little chores(progressing to things like preparing food for the whole family). They love to be acknowledged in front of everyone of what good helpers they were in making our food.

You can start with your toddler even before they have the vocabulary to respond beyond hums and saying yes or no.

Work Area Set-up
Control The Environment

• counter work space and sink area clear and ready to be used
• all recipe ingredients are measured & ready to be used
• all necessary cooking tools are in your reach but not your child
• bring a chair or 'stepper' to the counter work area for your child
• check your 'elbow room' working beside or from behind your child
• invite your toddler to come help you cook or bake for the family

For the first few times cooking with children or baking with toddlers will take a little extra time and patience. Clean as you go to keep the 'mess' manageable. Always prepare the tools and ingredients before your toddler starts to help you. As you both become more comfortable and confident with the techniques of preparing meals together, increase their independence by giving them less 'hand on hand' guidance with measuring, pouring and mixing.

Talk, discuss and guide your toddler through every thought that you have of every step you need to follow, outlining the step by step process of what needs to be done, why and how you will do it, reviewing & highlighting what still needs to be done. Talk about developing good habits and the practice of keeping the work area in order by putting things away and tidying up as you work.

Priceless Benefits

• build your child's self-confidence, self-worth & belief in themselves
• further develop fine motor skills & process simple problem solving
• build your child's need for independence in a safe environment
• immediate gratification to a tangible tasty product from your work
• easy, quick & fun bonding time with your child
• great for building one-to-one attention with your child
• build responsibility, helpfulness and value as a part of the family
• learn 'stick-to-itness', carry a task through to completion
• build & learn basic skills for teaching mathematics to children

Use structure and keep clear expectations regarding behavior on how to work together and continue to guide your toddler when they start speaking more than 'Yes' and 'uh-huh' with guiding questions developing good habits and a confident character.

Start with a simple recipe today. Have fun, relax and enjoy working together, baking and cooking with children.

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