Why involve your child in cooking or preparing food?
You’ve had a busy day, there are hungry mouths to feed and you’ve got 45 minutes until the next mealtime rolls around. 99.9% of the time it is quicker and easier to prepare and cook food yourself – I get it! However, on those occasions that you’ve got a little extra time up your sleeve, there are SO many reasons why it is a good idea to involve your child in the cooking or food preparation process.
It could be as simple as involving them in planning out meals for the week, washing vegetables, getting food out of the fridge or picking herbs. If you’re really game, involve them in the cooking process by getting them to cut certain foods (see the ‘prepare’ section of our store for child-friendly cooking knives), stir, crack the eggs, pour in the milk etc.
Firstly, involvement in food preparation encourages your child to interact and experiment with foods in a low-pressure environment that they may not otherwise be interested in. It is also an excellent opportunity to expose your child to lots of rich language.
Aside from labelling the food items (which is also a good idea to do), think about describing the foods you are using with ‘describing words’ (adjectives) like:
- Colour names
- Big/Huge/Giant
- Small/Tiny
- Thin/Thick
- Shiny
- Slippery/Wet
- Cold/Warm
- Rough/Smooth
…Or modelling the use of ‘doing words’ (verbs) like:
- Wash/Rinse
- Dry
- Stir/mix
- Cut/Chop/Slice
- Pour
- Crack (eggs)
- Knead
- Roll
The list could go on forever!
The speechie in me loves to see language modelling in action – if you try this out with your tot, tag us @feedingfix
Happy Cooking!
- Brit