Cooking with kids

Cooking with kids 

Learning to cook in our home is so much more than just learning a few valuable life skills to keep you alive one day when you’re out in the big world adulting, it’s also a great way to practice our maths skills, encourage conversation, grow indepence and self esteem, get creative and bond as a family.

Learning through play

Hamish loves to cook and has since he was little.

As a homeschool mom, I believe that teaching a child a skill should be a holistic approach, best learned through play, investigation and the freedom to try develop those skills often without harsh criticism or judgements.

For this reason we introduced cooking skills early to Hamish by purchasing a small plastic kitchen replica for him as a toddler, setting up a mud kitchen in the back yard and including him in growing, shopping for and cooking his own food.

As he has grown older, we’ve been letting him experiment more and more in the kitchen as well as with outside cooking classes lately. It’s been wonderful to see his self esteem grow alongside his culinary skills.

He may no longer enjoy his mud kitchen and he has long outgrown his toddler plastic kitchen however I still believe he’s young enough for learning through play to be the most effective way for him to learn, process and practice the information he needs.

So, we have been trying some online cooking games.

Online culinary games

He’s absolutely been loving the culinary games from www.culinaryschools.org

With these games he is able to choose from hundreds of mobile and desktop friendly games that teach kids about food, farming, cooking, culinary arts, hospitality careers and the restaurant business.

His 5 top favourites currently are : 

  • We Bare Bears Chocolate Artist

  • Molly of Denali Veggizilla

  • Bunnicula’s Kaotic Kitchen

  • Veggie Friends 

  • Fast Food Combat 

I love that these games are both fun and educational. With limited advertising on the boarders of the games,  the links to each game open from the website to a new tab, focused only on that game.

I also love that within the diversity of themes, there’s a game for each child’s age and interests.

Tips when in the kitchen with kids

Naturally nothing beats actually being in the kitchen, feeling and touching the food as you create a masterpiece of deliciousness.

I’ve always enjoyed cooking with my kids and here are some practical tips, for kerping safe and having fun, when cooking with your kids in the kitchen

🎂 Encourage kids to help while you are cooking. They can fetch utensils or pantry items. Older kids can peel vegetables or stir cakes, sauces, etc

🎂Give them child friendly utensils and containers

🎂Use aprons to cover the mess

🎂 Taste test EVERYTHING!

🎂 Older kids can be encouraged to cook easy items by themselves with supervision

🎂 From the time your child can read let them follow recipes ( This is great for adding some maths skills too)

🎂 Give lots of praise ….even on the cooking flops

🎂 Don’t just let kids help with the fun parts of cooking but also with the cleaning up. By encouraging them to wipe counters and help wash dishes we teach responsibility and independence

 

Milk Ice Pops – an easy recipe

To get you started in the kitchen here’s one of the first easy recipes Hamish and I made in the kitchen.

These milk pops are delicious and can be enjoyed while your child tries a new game from Culinary Schools

 

Milk ice pops 

You will need:

  • 1 can of condence milk
  • 3 cups of Full cream milk
  • 1 tbls milkshake mix ( we used Nesquick)
  • tbls sugar

Method:

Mix all your ingredients together in a jug.

Pour into lolly moulds. If you dont have lolly moulds you can use yoghurt pots with craft sticks inside.

Freeze. These are best served for 8 or more hours.

You can download the recipe card HERE 

 

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