Ready to introduce the joys of cooking to your child? Bring your child into the kitchen for an incredible bonding experience and an opportunity to share healthy nutritional habits with your little. In this activity, your child will learn the wonders of cooking and baking and practice measuring, fine motor skills, and creative expression all at once. With this activity, your child will want to become a little kitchen helper in no time!
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Materials My Little Kitchen Helper Used:
Before Starting with Your Little Chef:
Parents! This activity uses toddler knives. If this makes you hesitant, please read my post Toddler Kitchen Safety before starting.
In this activity, Evie (2.5 years old) uses a wooden knife with guidance from an adult. Never leave a child unattended in the kitchen. In the Kids Kitchen Set, child safe nylon knives are included. Before letting my daughter anywhere near these kitchen tools, I did test them on myself. Thankfully, I had no cuts!
Choosing Your Recipe:
Now it is time to get to the fun part! I loved using this Toddler Cookbook. I think the author did a wonderful job creating a book that is full of tasty, easy-to-do recipes for toddlers. She even includes recipes at different levels for Beginning chefs, intermediate chefs, and ‘advanced’ chefs. As you progress through levels 1, 2 and 3 you will see that your child will do more cutting and preparation work. The author also includes helpful tips for the recipes to avoid messy disasters.
Evie and I decided to make a level 2 Baked Pancake ‘Pizza’ for our Sunday morning breakfast. Evie’s verdict: AMAZING! Little Miss was having the time of her life with her apron and helping me mix ingredients. Apart from measuring the wet ingredients, Evie did almost all of the stirring (minus the one time her arm got tired), the measuring of dry ingredients, and decorating with fresh fruit. The recipe was very accessible and easy for a toddler to do, and the best part is that the recipes are relatively healthy! The sweetening ingredients in this recipe were applesauce and maple syrup. Overall, this recipe gets a thumbs up from Mama too!
Fine-tuning Your Little Kitchen Helper’s Cooking Technique
Fine Motor Skills
Being in the kitchen is a wonderful opportunity for your child to practice their fine motor skills. From stirring and mixing, to measuring and cracking eggs, your child can accomplish a wide variety of activities with only a few hand muscles. Developing fine motor skills is a critical part of learning how to write, who says you can develop those skills in the kitchen! Introducing your toddler to the kitchen and all of the wonderful things they can do there is one way to help your child practice these skills.
Measuring and Math Skills
Please tell me I am not the only one whose toddler miss places measuring spoons. I’m sure she snuck into the kitchen and borrowed one to pretend play or swiped one while we were doing the dishes. They are probably in her play kitchen but it’s hard to say for sure. Long story short, we had lots of practice counting with measuring cups and spoon that are a few sizes too small. As a Little Kitchen Helper, measuring and counting are very important skills to practice. We would practice scooping making it full and flat with the back of a plastic knife. We would count each scoop together. I love adding in counting practice whenever we can.
Baking as an Art
You would be hard-pressed to try to convince me that cooking and baking isn’t an art. Between the delicate flavor profiles and the beautiful designs, there is no way that cooking, and baking isn’t an art. The artistry on this particular recipe may be rudimentary; however, I would still consider this pancake of work of Evie’s art. Using one blueberry and banana at a time she carefully placed each piece of fruit and covered the pancake beautifully. We even got out a couple of shape cutter and cut our bananas into stars and hearts! A tip before you start down this path…have extra fruit on hand. Someone got a little hungry while cutting our banana and suddenly a full banana for our ‘pizza’ turned into half a banana for our ‘pizza’.
Science and Technology of Baking
Do you have older children that are ready to explore the world of proteins and chemistry when they are baking? Check out this wonderful post that breaks down the science in baking!
Is your not-so-little child ready to bring this activity to the next level and learn about energy? Try building their own solar oven!
Overall, I highly recommend bringing your littles into the kitchen if they are interested in it! It is a great opportunity for you to bond with your child. It is also a great opportunity to teach them how to make healthy food choices and how food is made. With Evie being a picky eater, bringing her into the kitchen has created the opportunity for her to experience new foods and at least taste them before she rejects them. It has encouraged her to be a little more open to different food options and to try new things!
I hope you and your little kitchen helper enjoyed being in the kitchen as much as Evie and I did! Feel free to share your experiences, favorite recipes or tools. I love to hear from everyone!