Teach Your Kids to Cook Now to Make Them Better People

Are you making dinner tonight? Then do it with your kids. If you teach your kids to cook now it will make them better people later. Cooking with your kids is an all purpose activity that will teach them valuable life skills in and out of the kitchen.

Creating Healthy Habits

Childhood obesity is a serious topic and concern as of late. Experts say the single most important thing you can do for your families health is cook at home. And the better news is that teaching kids to cook may make them eat healthier. When you involve your kids in cooking you get to talk to them about how eating fruits and vegetables help keep you healthy and strong. Discuss how you should “eat the rainbow” to ensure you’re getting a wide variety of vitamins and minerals.

Talking About Healthy Ingredients

Make desserts. But make them with real ingredients. When you make ice cream with your kids they’ll know what is supposed to go into it. Milk, cream and sugar. No extra things you can’t pronounce. Making your kids understand what’s real and what’s processed allows your kids to understand what you’re doing when you flip over the package in the grocery store.

Kids Become Less Fussy Eaters

Get your kids involved in picking ingredients. When you directly involve your children in the cooking process they are more inclined to try the finished dish. They know what everything was and aren’t afraid to try something new or different. Have them taste each ingredient as you use it.

Ingrain a Postive Mindset

Kids who cook become more positive. They stop saying “I can’t” and start saying “I can”. Cooking can seem like an overwhelming task to adults, let alone children. Giving children the opportunity to practice a life-long skill enables them to approach everything with a can-do attitude. When you go out to dinner watch your child say “I can make that”.

Family Time Together

You should spend as much time with your kids as possible. There are a few fleeting precious moments that you get to enjoy with your kids while they are so young. Bringing the generations of family together in the kitchen allows your kids to understand you, themselves and the family. Talk about where recipes come from and what they mean to your family.

The Kitchen Classroom

Kids learn through doing and that is the best way to introduce a new concept to a young child. When you teach your kids to cook they engage all the senses. You can turn any recipe into a fun learning experience.

• Literacy – following directions and sequence.
• Math – measuring, mixing and counting.
• Science – observing, predicting , cause and effect.

Food nourishes the body, cooking with your kids will nourish their soul. Kids love spending time with their parents and this is the perfect opportunity to make that happen while teaching them new skills that will make them better people.

Did you teach your kids to cook? How’d it go? What do you make with them?