During peak developmental ages, children learn by using all of their senses. Through tasting, touching, smelling, feeling, and hearing, children are able to learn more about the world around them. Cooking is a great activity for children because it engages all of the senses. Cooking with your children can happen at any age. The older your children are the more involved they can be with helping you actually cook and prepare the food. Younger children can have a lot of fun measuring and weighing out ingredients!
There are a lot of different components to cooking such as reading and following directions, weighing, and measuring. This is why cooking is so beneficial for children. Activities such as weighing and measuring are great ways for your young ones to develop their fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. Your older children can use cooking as a way to understand practical applications of math and science. Adding fractions and understanding how heat affects different substances are a few of the things your children can learn at home, in the kitchen!
Learning the basics of cooking is beneficial not just in terms of sensory development, but in terms of basic life skills. Cooking with your children while they are young will help instill basic cooking skills and a love for cooking and food. These will be important qualities to have when they grow up, but are sometimes harder to develop as adults. So getting them involved in the kitchen at a young age will give them important building blocks for their future.
Cooking is also a great way to help your children develop confidence and creativity. Allowing a child to be creative in the kitchen and have the whole family enjoy the outcome of their hard work is a great way to help your children develop a sense of confidence and pride in their work. The benefits of getting your children involved in cooking are endless!
If your little ones love getting involved in the kitchen let us know in the comments some of their favorite recipes and what they love to help with! You can view the original article on Nourish Interactive!
