This guest post is a fun look at how to help your kids learn to eat good food… along with you!
How to Inspire Your Kids to Cook
Contrary to what adults think, most kids do love to cook. Sure, it will be messy; children will create a lot of ruckuses, but there’s also plenty of room for them to express their creativity, and not to mention the smiles of satisfaction on their cute faces knowing that they’ve cooked something.
Teaching your kids to cook and encouraging them to learn cooking isn’t only healthy; it will also prep them to face various challenges of life. Furthermore, inspiring them to cook at home and eat a healthy diet, will improve their overall health, stabilize their energy, and sharpen their minds and their moods. You can also enroll your children in cooking classes if it’s possible. And it is simpler and less time-consuming than you imagine.
Here are a few things that you can do to inspire your kids to enjoy cooking:
Involve Your Kids in the Cooking Process
Most parents don’t take their kids’ grocery shopping, cooking meals, or even ask what kind of food they like eating. Well, if you want your kids to enjoy cooking for themselves, you better get them involved. Take them to the supermarkets, ask to pick the items they like, ask them to plan there, ask them to help you in the kitchen, peel some onions or potatoes—things like that, and they’ll become interested in the cooking process.
Be Patient
You need to be patient when you’re asking your kids to help to prepare meals. Expect everything to take longer than it normally would. So, ask your partner or guest to wait before they can eat. Keep in mind, when it comes to kids, the journey is more fun than the destination itself.
Get Them Dress Up As Chefs
Children like dressing up, whether it is for a birthday party or Halloween. So, why don’t you get them all excited by asking them to dress up as chefs and cooks with whimsical hats and aprons? It will not only make them have fun while chopping tomatoes or whisking eggs, it will also keep their clothes clean.
Guide Them through the Recipes
This won’t be a problem with older children as they can follow the recipes and the cooking process. However, if you’re cooking with younger kids, asking them to follow instructions will take out the fun from the cooking. Instead, explain what you’ll be cooking, show them pictures of the recipe and the ingredients that go with it, and ask them to help. It will make them feel useful.
Cooking Can Be Great Learning Opportunity
While you’re cooking, talk about what you’re cooking to your kids, talk about ingredients, where they’re grown, useful tips and techniques about cooking, and things like that. Maybe you don’t give much thought to it, but cooking is actually a practical way to learn about food science, mathematics, and geography. Cooking will also teach your kids time management, coordination, and improve their motor skills. If your kids experience this first hand, it will also make them more inclined to cook.
Tasting and Touching the Food
The best part of the cooking process is the feeling the food and tasting it. It will make the experience more gratifying for them. They also become more adventurous with their eating, and they’ll also learn which foods have to be cooked for longer or which ones can be eaten raw.
Give Them Age-Appropriate Tasks
If you ask your 4-year-old to prepare Denver omelet even after taking him through the recipe, he will mess it up. There are recipe books for kids with age guidelines, so you need to provide him with them. But most importantly, look at your kid and recognize what he or she can do. There are plenty of things for kids to do in the kitchen, even if like washing vegetables or plates in the sink. If your kids are older, you can assign something more advanced like cooking, chopping vegetables or grinding meat.
David A. Buhr has over fifteen years of experience in the field of kid phycology. He specializes in setting up Educational State. He is an expert in the area of developing strategies of kids. He is presently working at his https://smiletutor.sg