Cooking with kids 2014-10-10 15:01
This blog has always been about sharing my sewing activities with you, as explained here.
However, since I’ve become a mother, I’ve been trying to discover tips to simplify my parent life in order to have more time to make fun activities.
I’d like to share those tips with you and also here from you and your tips!
When your toddler is awake, the time allowed for your own activities is often shrunken to a few minutes a day because toddlers require a lot of attention.
I like to cook, and I found out that my toddler loved to be involved in cooking activities. She takes it as a game that we do together, and I take it as time for me to play with her and prepare a nice meal. Win-win situation as they call it!
Here is what has best worked for involving my daughter in cooking so far:
– Ask her to put the molds ready. Always a success with the cupcake molds as you can see on the picture.
– Let her be the one who smells or taste all the ingredients (if the nature of ingredients allows it, for instance fruits, vegetable, flour, milk, but no raw meet or eggs). That will broaden her smell and taste and make her discover the many ingredients we can use for cooking.
– Delegate the part of the stirring to her (always with close supervision in my case!)
– Give her an own set of bowl, spoon and seeds (small enough not to be of any dangers if swallowed, like linseeds or poppyseeds) so that she can “cook” alongside with me but without interfering. She would be so proud of making you taste her “soup” or “pasta” or whatever is her favorite food right now.
– Pretend that the big package we got from the mail is an oven and give her some “food” to bake with a protective glove so that she can bake her own cake.
– Give her the cookbook and ask her to read the recipe and lead the cooking!
– Let her decorate the cakes, especially cupcakes with frosting and all kind of fruits on top.
– And finally, enjoy and eat what you have cooked together!
Happy meal to all our little chefs!
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