As I mentioned on the last post, getting kids in the kitchen is a great way to add vocabulary, but there are other benefits as well. This information is taken from the blog Childhood 101. You can follow the links at the bottom of the post to find some fun, kid-friendly recipes to try with your little one.
As cooking engages all of the senses – seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and (most fabulously) tasting – cooking with toddlers provides them with fabulous sensory input that is really important for brain development. As a teacher and a mum I have cooked with toddlers many, many times and I find that cooking with toddlers can be lots of fun and relatively stress free with a little preparation. Here are my tips…
- Choose a time when your toddler is not overly tired – first thing in the morning or after naptime work well.
- To keep the cooking experience short to suit a short toddler attention span, pre-measure the ingredients before you begin and have them individually separated ready for your toddler to add to the mixing bowl or pot.
- Toddlers love to mix and stir so be sure to include mixing and stirring in the cooking experience!
- There will invariably be mess but that is part of the process too. Fortunately toddlers also love helping to clean up!
Find fun recipes to try with your toddler at these sites: http://childhood101.com/2014/09/10-things-to-cook-with-toddlers/
http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Kids-in-the-Kitchen/Detail.aspx
http://www.cookinglight.com/food/recipe-finder/recipes-for-toddlers
http://www.parenting.com/gallery/recipes-cook-kids?page=0
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