Narrative Review: Cooking With Children

Suggested Title: Cooking with kids: The best and most effective child development activity!

Suggested title: If you have never cooked with your kids, you will after reading this!

Cooking with children not only works out as a wonderful and effective bonding and communication exercise, but also it offers a myriad of opportunities for child skill development and learning. From mathematics to nutrition and from science to geography and more can all be included in a cook session. Needless to say, it is also a fantastic way to get the entire family involved in a fun activity that offers quick gratification.

After all, who does not like to enjoy the sumptuous results of their labor? If you have not used cooking as a child development initiative,

But, a cooking session with the little ones need not involve any of these and even when they do, if you are around to supervise and the dish your whipping is fairly simple, you should have no problems at all. In fact, sandwiches, salads, cookies, muffins are easy enough to leave you with ample of attention span for your kids. Of course, setting ground rules before working together also makes the process simpler, safer and more enjoyable.

Hone those mathematical skills!

Cooking time can be great to encourage counting, adding and measurements. Ask the kids to participate in the cooking by reading out the measurements of the ingredients and then even counting them as you pour or mix them in. Use berries, nuts and fruit pieces for garnishing which can again give you the scope to teach numbers and even simple addition and subtraction.

Encourage scientific curiosity

If the cooking session is going to involve freezing or boiling, encourage your children to understand the scientific process that goes into boiling water or what happens after the boiling temperature/freezing temperature is reached. This is a wonderful time to discuss solid, liquid and gaseous states and how substances go from one to the

Always ask open ended questions such as; why do you think this water boils into bubbles or see how cold the ice cream is, how would you measure the temperature? This allows you to seek answers from your child and shows the kid that it is alright to have his/her own questions.

Teach about nutrition and healthy eating

Cooking together also gives child care takers and parents the ideal chance to discuss the importance of healthy eating and the impact of nutrition on the body; not to mention that cooking with young children allows you to inculcate lifelong healthy eating habits and introduce new ingredients.

Work on vocabulary

Because you will probably be working with an ingredients list, you also have the perfect environment for teaching new vocabulary. From sugar to sweet and from the names of fruits to spices and even what various kitchen appliances are called and how they are used can all be made a part of the cooking