Cooking With Kids

Cooking with kids will enable them to learn new skills, and improve on the various skills they already have.

Skills Kids Learn When Cooking

• Reading and Comprehension can be increased. A child's cookbook is a great place to start. In order to create a dessert, a salad, a dip, the child chef will need to not only read the recipe, but understand it as they go along, in order to perform the various steps correctly. Otherwise, the dish may not be edible.

• Math Skills : Fractions, oh my goodness. How well did you do with fractions?  Many children not only hate math, they will hate it once they start having to learn fractions. This is the perfect time for a young chef to be introduced to fractions, and learn why they are necessary. While they follow recipes, while you explain what 1 ½ cups of flour is, how to measure it, but do it themselves, those fractions might just make more sense.  While you are at it, hide that 1/2 cup measuring cup and have them use the 1/4 cup instead, or have them measure 1/2 cup sugar with the 1/4 cup, pouring the sugar into the 1/2 cup. Now they have learned it takes two 1/4 cups to make 1/2 cup.  Who knows, they might want to make a math game out of measuring things. 

• Social Skills : Of course, they will be cooking, supervised by an adult. However, there must be communication between you and the child as the project begins and ends. This is a time for team work, two people working together in order to get a job started and finished. So, you are making cupcakes for the holidays, and there are several children who want to participate in doing the decorations. This is a great time for children to learn to talk with each other, work together, while also having fun

• Learning About Those That Are Different: Another great social skill involves those who may different than us. This is a good time for your young chef to learn that there are special tables and utensils for those who may have physical limitations or disabilities. If you have someone in the home who is disabled, then possibly having your young chef select their dinnerware and utensils will truly give them hands on, real life experience.

The Young Chef Learns About Rules

Following Rules: Many children will tell their parents, “Gee, you never let me do anything I want to do.” Okay, maybe the things they want to do are unreasonable, or unsafe. The kitchen can be a dangerous place. It is also the location where most home fires begin. This is a great time for the child to learn about rules, why they exist, and good reasons for them to obey them. One rule is that if they do not follow instructions, such as those in a recipe, their dish will be ruined. Cooking with children will enable parents to teach them them about rules, by teaching them kitchen safety.

Examples of Kitchen Rules:

• Home fire safety is one rule that should always be taught. This is a great time to teach fire safety in the kitchen, and possibly review fire safety with the entire family.

• Washing hands before starting activities and in between handling the various products being used in their cooking adventure. Food poisoning is often caused by hands not being washed, and cross contamination of foods if hands are not washed in between.

• Cutlery and Utensils: In food preparation, knives and other cutlery needs to be used. There may be knives, and other utensils that you will not want your young chef to use. The rule here is for child safety, and a time for them to learn, while you may be doing some dicing or chopping for them, that if the knife is sharp enough to cut through hard foods, then it is will certainly be sharp enough to create a dangerous cut should they mishandle the knife, which is why the rule is that they cannot handle knives and various cutlery or other utensils for now because of the danger involved.  There are cutlery sets designed just for kids too, so they can help with the peeling, chopping and cutting for food preparation. 

• Clean Kitchen: Again, family safety can be taught as well. The child chef can learn, that a clean kitchen is part of cooking. Bugs and other nasty pests come to a dirty kitchen to find food scraps, the little crumbs that are left lying around, and those pests bring sickness with them. Also, the importance of clean utensils, dishes, pots and pans are part of a clean kitchen and not having nasty germs or bacteria which can cause illness if they are not cleaned properly

Conclusion

There are many projects for your young chefs to do in a fun and safe manner, with your supervision. For those who truly enjoy cooking and baking, you may want to purchase their own cooking utensils, cookbooks, aprons that will help them feel like chefs, have fun, and to be safe at the same time.

Cooking with children is not only fun, but it is also rewarding. 

SIMPLE RECIPE FOR NO MESS PUDDING POPS-POPSICLES

Face it pudding pops and other single serving ice cream, popsicles are not cheap.  Here are a couple of easy recipes, and I mean easy.  They don't melt like fudgesicles do.
 
Ingredients:   Instant Pudding mix-Any flavor
"I had a friend who made these, so I don't know how many pops can be made from one box of pudding mix."  It may pay you to start with one box since it is simple to make more.

INSTRUCTIONS

Make pudding and chill til firm, as you normally do. 

Fill your popsicle molds with the mixture. Close up, and put into freezer til frozen.   


When you take these out, all  you need to do is run them under cold water just to loosen the top so you can pull out the pudding pop.

You can also do this with smoothies


MORE:  You can do this with Kool-aid and make popsicles.


You can also use ice cube tray, stick a popsicle stick in once they are firm enough, yet soft enough for the stick to go in and stay in place. 

BPA FREE POPSICLE MOLDS
Dishwasher Safe

Make your own push-up such as Kool-Pops