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If you have children, you try to devise new ways to have fun with them while keeping them busy. You can prepare fun foods and cooking with your children is a wonderful experience for the whole family. Cooking with the family can create family memories and teach your children to be responsible.
Today, the purpose is to highlight some of the benefits of cooking with your children as well as some helpful ideas to ensure that the activity is both fun and safe.
Benefits of Cooking For Children
Besides the fun, here are some other ways in which your kids will benefit from the cooking:
Pre-schoolers
They will see how the meals they eat are prepared, in addition to getting hands-on experience, which is an excellent way to learn and feel like they’re helping out.
School-age Children
Besides learning some cooking basics, they can also apply their arithmetic skills as they help mix ingredients for recipes. Furthermore, you can take advantage of this time to talk about proper nutrition and the reason behind choosing the ingredients you are using. It can lay the foundation for healthy eating at a later time.
Teens
They might appreciate the opportunity to improve their cooking skills, which is a good preparation for when they have to cook for themselves. They also might be interested in experimenting with different skills.
Tips To Ensure Positive Cooking Experience with Your Kids
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Proper Planning
Talk to your children in advance about picking a menu and take them shopping with you for them to see what it takes to prepare a full-blown meal from scratch. While at it, you can emphasize budgeting, food selection, as well as quantities needed.
Safe Cooking
Go for simple recipes that won’t compromise the safety of the children. While making the meals, stress safety factors as the reality that pots, boiling water, and oil can be hot, and they need to be careful, lest they get hurt.
Unless your kid is old enough to use a knife, you should do the chopping yourself and don’t forget to highlight that knives are dangerous and shouldn’t be touched in the absence of an adult. You also should be the one cooking on the stove top or putting pans in the oven whenever possible.
Children should be given simple tasks like stirring cake batter, washing lettuce leaves, or tossing pre-measured spices into a bowl. Kitchen safety is paramount for the whole family.
Cleaning Up
Before they get their hands into the ingredients, children must wash their hands with soap and water. Let them know that healthy cooking means cleaning up before touching anything. If they’re handling raw chicken, eggs, or meat, you should make them understand the dangers of salmonella and why it’s important to wash their hands after handling these items. Don’t forget to remind them the importance of cleaning as they go, and show them how to clean bowls and utensils. Cleanliness ensures the safety of every family member.
Getting your children into the kitchen to cook with you is a win-win situation, their age and what you make notwithstanding. As your children interact with you in the kitchen, the will learn a new skill all while teaching them responsibility.
As parents being responsible and a role-model is part of our job and our kids sometimes see us as their heroes, but who looks out for us? Having a good family lawyer in our corner helps us sleep a bit easier at night so we don’t have to sweat the little things that might happen to us down the road.
