This is a collaborative post.
Cooking is more than just a daily chore or a survival skill. It’s a creative, fun and educational activity that prepared your child with skills for life.
We have always been really keen that our girls learn how to cook from an early age. We want them to be confident in their own abilities should they ever live alone, be able to cook for friends and their family and know how to keep a healthy lifestyle.
1. Learning Different Skills
All children think cooking is chopping and stirring but we discovered that there were so many more ways that we could get them helping early on to build their confidence.
The jobs that children enjoy most in the kitchen include:
- Weighing out ingredients
- Counting ingredients – for example 8 cherries out of the jar to go in a cake
- Washing fruit and vegetables
- Taking the stalks out of apples and tomatoes
- Peeling bananas – If they are being mushed up in a dish, it doesn’t matter if they are slightly heavy handed
- Grating chocolate and cheese
- Chopping mushrooms
- Buttering bread and toast
- Layering up sandwiches – slices of ham and cheese
- Getting all the ingredients out of the cupboard in preparation to start
- Stirring – we make a lot of fruit cakes and stirring all the ingredients can take ages
- Greasing cake tins – its messy but they love it!
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2. Making decisions
We found that by involving the girls in decision making in the kitchen that they were more inclined to eat the dish and even try new ingredients.
These could be simple decisions like which shape pasta to have or bigger decisions like what meal to actually make with the ingredients available.
3. Talking about the ingredients
By discussing the ingredients we used, we looked at where food is sourced, how expensive certain ingredients are and how healthy or nutritious different meals and ways of preparing food can be.
Time Management: Cooking requires planning and time management. Children learn to organise their tasks, manage their time effectively, and understand the importance of following steps in a specific order.
3. Boosting Creativity
After learning how to follow simple recipes, we encouraged our girls to experiment with adding or taking away certain ingredients. I like to think our children aren’t particularly fussy eaters, but they definitely have their own tastes and won’t entertain certain ingredients.
The beauty of having a cake business from home was that our girls knew very early on that food can be fun and colourful.
4. Encouraging Independence
As the girls have got older, we have sometimes asked them to have a think about what they would like for the family meal if they were home before one of us.
On occasion, they have been able to decided completely what is for dinner and start to prepare it. We know that if we have passed on this responsibility that we totally have to accept what is on offer.
As our second daughter is about to start university, we are confident that she will be able to keep herself fed, taking away at least one of the worries about her moving away.
5. Strengthening Family Bonds
Cooking together provides an excellent opportunity for family bonding. As the children eat at home less and less these days, the opportunities for us to share meals together become even more precious.
7. Social Skills and Teamwork
I love that whenever we go away, our girls’ first instinct is to invite friends over for food and drinks.
At first this was basically sticking a pizza in the oven but over time, actual meals have been shared too.
We even went down to London for a children’s cooking class with Sarsons Vinegar because of our love of cooking together.
8. Patience and Safety
Safety First: Teach your child about kitchen safety, including handling knives, using the stove, and cleaning up spills to prevent accidents.
Be Patient: Cooking with children can be messy and time-consuming. Be patient and focus on the learning experience rather than the end result. This is what I found most difficult at the beginning when the girls wanted to help with baking. I was running a cake business and spending hours every day baking, the last thing I wanted to do was even more. Slowly but surely, we learned how to enjoy simple baking together and most definitely enjoyed eating our bakes afterwards. I’m so glad we can look back on those baking days together – they weren’t idyllic at the time but they were definitely worth it!
Cooking lessons offer a wealth of benefits for children, from enhancing academic skills to fostering creativity and independence. By involving your child in cooking, you’re not only teaching them valuable life skills but also creating cherished family memories. So, grab an apron, pick a recipe, and start cooking with your child today. The lessons they learn in the kitchen will stay with them for a lifetime.
Its never too late! If you haven’t been able to do much cooking with your children and teens, then you can always start now. It’s a great idea to get your teens cooking in Year 12 to prepare for going away to college.
About 2 Adults 3 Children
2 Adults 3 Children is a family with 3 daughters, aged 13+. They live near Liverpool and share the best events happening in the North West plus their travels further afield.
