What Do Kids Learn While Cooking?
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It’s a widely held belief that children who help prepare food are also, natch, more likely to eat it. As if this gift were not enough, the folks over at the website Kids Cooking Activities have compiled a lengthy list of all the tangible skills – from math to history – waiting to be picked up in the kitchen.
To name just a few lessons available during a typical cooking session:
- Math skills, such as counting, fractions, sequencing (determining orders of events), measuring and shapes
- Problem-solving
- Increasing vocabulary
- Chemistry and science, including making predictions and understanding how food changes while cooking
- Geography, such as where different foods grow and why they grow best there
- Cultural lessons about the diets of people in other parts of the world
- Creativity
- History lessons about how people used to eat in the past
- Health lessons, such as understanding nutrition and the food groups, as well as appreciating the importance of safety and cleanliness
- Fine motor skills, through whisking, measuring, pouring, sifting, and rolling
- And of course social skills, such as responsibility, cooperation, sharing, and self-esteem
See their full list at Kids Cooking Activities. And if you’re all fired up and ready to tie an apron on your little ones and get cooking, the website has lots of age-appropriate kitchen activities to get you started.
Image: Tammy Everts