Next Sunday morning, surprise your angels by inviting them to the kitchen and join them in creating their own breakfast. Instead of having kids run down the stairs screaming over a toy, let them invest some of that energy and creativity into a new experience they will love repeating every week with you at their side. Cooking with children can be an instructive and amazing process of observing them as they become responsible and able to organize not only the food ingredients, but most importantly their own minds.
Do not let the fear of them being hurt or injured stop you from letting your children bond with each other as well as with you. Cooking preparation can bring families together in a whole new sense. Giving in to some of their demands, while teaching them how to use the available resources, can be a unique experience for everyone involved. Under your guidance and support, kids can learn how to handle eggs, mix butter with sugar, open up a milk bottle, or place the prepared food into the right size of containers. Cooking can become a new tool for you to transfer the knowledge you want and have fun in the meanwhile.
First of all, make sure that you gather all of your ingredients at one place before beginning. In order to do that you should teach them to read the recipe from the beginning to the end and to keep mentally a note book with all the information they gather. Specific quantities, different types of food ingredients, the size of pots and pans, and the mixing process, everything you can imagine can be a very interesting lesson for a kid to learn while preparing their first delicious meal. After the recipe is read, it is time to advice the kids where to locate the ingredients inside the kitchen cabinets or fridge and then help them transfer the ones they will need, for the recipe they have selected, to the cooking preparation area. Teach them how important it is to know exactly what they are supposed to do and how their ingredients look before they are cooked. Name each one of the ingredients and show them how they look or even taste like. Then, it is time to gather all the necessary equipment. Do not allow children to touch those that are dangerous for their safety, but tell them instead that this is a process they will be able to handle later and they should allow you to do something to help them out. It is after all a joined effort. If the kids know it is in their best interest not to mess around with something they cannot handle they will feel reluctant to take the initiative of exploring the kitchen equipment during your absence. Of course, it is always a good idea not to leave this machinery around for them to be tempted. Now, you have everything in front of you, it is time to measure the ingredients and let the real fun begin by instructing them how to mix and when everything together.
Remember that it is fun to work together in the kitchen and your kids will surprise you by eating with great pride their own creations-even if these are not brownies but mini-vegetable platters. Let your kids learn the "secrets" of your kitchen and invest in the free time you have with them to explore yet another of their "hidden" talents.
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Jonathon Hardcastle writes articles on many topics including Cooking, Real Estate, and Outdoors
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