Cooking with Toddlers in the kitchen....
Cooking with toddlers
A healthy attitude to food starts long before we grow into adults and is embedded into us from when we are born from our parents and grandparents. For example, the ‘Early Years’ of life is a time of rapid physical growth and change and the time when eating behaviours build the foundation for future eating patterns into the future. Children learn how, what, when and how much to eat, based on their parents cultural and familial beliefs, attitudes and practices surrounding food and eating. In addition, the kitchen in your home can become the teaching ground where children learn basic skills, make choices about food and learn basic cooking techniques. Such as, measuring ingredients, stirring and mixing ingredients together. Therefore, encouraging your child to cook with you in the kitchen can help maintain valuable life skills for when your child becomes older.
Cooking can be enjoyable and fun, especially when you make something comforting and delicious. Moreover, cooking with toddlers can be both rewarding and fun for child and parent and is a cheap activity to do if you are looking to entertain them. Toddlers can get a sense of pride, build their self- confidence and practice honing-in on some of their developmental skills, such as fine motor and cognitive skills and abilities. For example, learning how to hold a fork and engaging all the senses of sight, smell, touch, taste and sound. Therefore cooking with small children provides them an array of sensory input that is really important for their brain development.
As a day care educator and nutritionist, I have cooked with toddlers and children including my own three on many occasions. By sharing my experiences of what worked well, might help encourage you to invite your children, grandchildren or children you may be caring for into your kitchen.
The key is to set your environment in the kitchen in an organised manner and keep it as stress free as possible.
Here are my tips for the preparation needed to help you transition your child into the kitchen.
1. Choose your times carefully before cooking, making sure your child is not sick (especially important as you don’t want to make the whole family sick) or overly tired. For example, first thing in the morning or just after they have had a nap in the afternoon.
2. Use simple recipes with not many ingredients.
3. If you have more than one child, you may want to take the opportunity and introduce some sharing techniques first, by creating activities and games on sharing before you start them in the kitchen. For example, card and board games, like “Snap” and “Snakes and Ladders”.
4. Teach your child good health and hygiene practices by making sure your child has their hair pulled back off their face and wash their hands properly before participating in any kitchen activities.
5. Keep the kitchen environment manageable and the cooking experience short (which also suits a toddler’s attention span). This includes pre-measuring ingredients before you start and have the ingredients individually separated to add to the mixing bowl.
6. Toddlers love to create, mix and stir so be sure to include mixing and stirring for the cooking experience.
7. Have a table/ bench at toddler’s height. This prevents them from standing on chairs, stools etc, to reach the kitchen bench and provides a safe cooking experience.
8. Allow your child to help with the cleaning up. Don’t be surprised there will be a mess but this is all part of the process, even for us grownups right! However, toddlers love to help and be part of the action so by allowing them the time to help and get involved in the clean-up is wonderful for their self-esteem. For example, getting your child to help wash utensils, bowls and wipe the dishes with a tea-towel. In addition, wipe up any spills on the table surface with hot soapy water and dry with a clean cloth or paper towel. Toddlers also love to sweep the floor, use the brush and shovel and put away the clean dishes. All this is part of the activity after all.
9. Last, but not least, have fun with it. Your child will be learning invaluable life skills, so make it their cooking experience an enjoyable and rewarding one.
Here are some fun recipes to cook with toddlers
Cheese and Vegemite scrolls
Butter cake
Wheat Bic Slice
Fruit salad
Chocolate chip cookies
References
Australian Government (2015). Get up and grow. Retrieved from https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/phd-early-childhood-nutrition-resources
Savage, J. S., Fisher, J. O., & Birch, L. L. (2008). Parental Influence on eating behavior. J. Law Med Ethics: 2007; 35 (1): 22.34 doi:10.1111/j. 1748-720x.2007.00111.x