Cooking with kids is a great way for kids to express their creative side. It is a great bonding experience for your entire family. Our little chefs get to learn basic cooking skills but also skills like maths and where food comes from. Getting the kids in the kitchen creates great habits and hopefully steer them away from being take away kids. Asking your child to help set the table and cut up a carrot doesn’t sound very appealing to a young chef. Kids are excited to eat something then they tend to enjoy making it to.
Here are some tips to getting creative with your young chef.
Get their hands dirty
Kids love getting dirty so let down your armour and go wild. Let them mix dough with their hands and make a pizza. And let’s not forget making a cake and licking the bowl. Let them get creative with recipe and create faces and art. Make sure you provide a range of fresh food including fresh fruit, vegetables, cheeses and nuts so they can make a variety of different faces. Introduce different utensils such as spiralizers, vegetable peeler and chopping boards.
Ignite their senses
Experiment with your children’s pallet. Let them taste different ingredients as you are preparing recipes. This is how children can experience the world and develop their taste buds. Use herbs and spices, different fruits and vegetables and let them help you prepare them. According to Nutrition Australia there have been many studies on taste preferences and they have found the way we acquire our food is through repetition. So if they don’t like it the first time then keep offering them the same food. Appearance also has a major part on food so getting them to help make the recipe look pretty is extremely important.
Don’t fix their mistakes
Sometimes not fixing their mistake can create an amazing recipe but most of the time it can be disastrous. This is a great learning experience for the young chefs it allows them to experiment and understand why recipes are successful.
Take them food shopping
Who dread’s taking their little one’s to do the groceries. Come on hand’s up! Take some deep breaths and maybe allocate a bit of extra time in your schedule. This is a great way for kids to find new fruits and vegetables and help you to choose food for your weeks recipes. Maybe give them a task of the first one to find the plums?
Starting a vegetable patch
Growing your own vegetables and herbs in your own garden teaches kids where food comes from. They can plant, grown and weed. Kids can pick their own ingredients and make a variety of different recipes.
Cooking is a great creative way for kids to express themselves. It allows them to become adventurous with what they eat and also helps with skills like maths, science and geography.
Good luck in raising your little chef’s.
