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Cooking with your kids can be a nightmare – mess on them, the floor, the counter and of course the washing up, plus the fact that it always takes longer than doing it yourself! Cooking with your kids is however, one of those skills that can be learnt from a very young age and made very personal to the child through personalised cookbooks. There are many reasons why cooking with kids from aged one and beyond is beneficial. We’ve got 10 great reasons here, including why a personalised cookbook can help your kids on their way!
1. Cooking with your Kids Helps Build Social-emotional development
Hands-on cooking activities help children develop confidence and skill. They love following a personalised cookbook recipe where they are in the story, they can mimic their story self in real life! Copying their story self often gives them more confidence than just following a regular recipe. The personalised cookbook recipes encourage children to be self-directed and independent, plus teaches them to follow directions and develop problem-solving skills.
2. Physical development
Fine motor and eye-hand coordination skills are developed by chopping, mixing, squeezing, and spreading. As an adult we often take these skills for granted but learning how to chop a carrot and not your finger needs practising!
3. Cognitive development
Cooking with your kids encourages a child’s thinking, problem-solving, and creativity. It also allows the child the opportunity to use the knowledge they have and apply it by counting, measuring ingredients, following the recipe sequence, following directions, and cause and effect.
4. Language development
The act of cooking offers the opportunity to develop language by linking it to other areas, including Maths, Science, Social Studies, Arts, and Literacy. You can do this by encouraging the kids to talk about what they are doing, counting out ingredients, and watching materials change colour, texture, and medium as well as asking questions such as why do you think that happens? (source: SCOE)
5. Cooking with Your Kids and Trying new foods
Children who cook are more likely to taste and try the finished result (source: NY Times). Therefore, choosing recipes that use new ingredients or tastes can be a great way to introduce them to the kids.
6. Healthy habits
Life is much easier if healthy habits are instilled from a young age, and cooking is a way to talk about healthy foods and why an ingredient is important to their development.
7. Life skills
Learning to cook teaches skills that are needed later in life – you need to eat every day for the rest of your life!
8. Builds your relationship
When a parent and child cook together the activity brings them closer together, it becomes a treasured memory and often builds a shared interest.
9. Food knowledge
Depending on the age of the child, they may think that potatoes come from McDonalds and that the supermarket produces milk. Talking about where food comes from is all part of their education on the world and how it works and handling raw ingredients is the ideal starting point.
10. Accomplishment
Completing a task gives you a sense of accomplishment, a chance to say, “I did that!” Following a personalised cookbook allows the child to not only create a delicious snack, but also impress themselves by being able to say I’ve made the same xx as in the book!
Personalised cookbooks are new type of book from Story Antics, each recipe story contains a child and adult helper. Each character can be personalised by name, skin, hair and eye colour allowing you to create a story about the two of you at home in the kitchen. Use a personalised cookbook to gain excitement about the cooking activity before you start, and then follow it while you cook and watch your little chef turn into a master chef!
We hope that you are interested in this article – do take time to have a look at the other cooking content that we have on our site including some fabulous family recipes:
Family Recipes
Energy Balls for kids
These are a great after school snack for kids, and while you are making them you can even help them to learn about healthy eating too. Talk to them about the ingredients that you are using and how they effect your body.
This makes 14 large balls - as the ones pictures here.
You can roll these in coconut, instead of the sesame seeds if you want, and vanilla essence is also a great addition to the recipe too.
Hearty family meal: Spanish Chorizo and Roast Cod with Capers and Tomato
The marriage of fish with Spanish chorizo brings a flavorful dish to your table with every meal. Enjoy this delightful Spanish Chorizo and roast cod with capers and tomato tonight.
Cookie sandwiches
Fabulous cookies made with Double Decker chocolate bars - the perfect indulgence!
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Take care and enjoy,
Helen
Helen
Helen is a mum to two, social media consultant, and website editor; and this site is (we think) the only Social Enterprise parenting magazine! Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, and use those grey cells at the same time. KiddyCharts has reach of over 1.1million across social and the site. The blog works with big family brands (including travel) to help promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10. It gives 51%+ profits to Reverence for Life, who fund a number of important initiatives in Africa, including bringing running water and basic equipment to a school in Tanzania. Helen has worked as a digital marketing consultant (IDM qualified) with various organisations, including Channel Mum, Truprint, Talk to Mums, and Micro Scooters. She loves to be creative in the brand campaigns she works on. Get in touch TODAY!