On this International Oatmeal Cookie Day, the topic of Today’s Low Tech Tuesday is… cooking!
Why you should introduce your kids to cooking
- To learn how to cook is to learn how to plan the shopping list, manage money and choosing the right products in the store. Making them choose the vegetables at the farmer’s market is a great way of teaching them about healthy food.
- To learn more about ingredients and develop their palate. Some children tend to be picky about food, but there is a good chance that they will eat a dish they personally make.
- Your kids will eat healthier after that. According to the California Department Of Education, “children who don’t know how to cook often rely on packaged foods of questionable nutritional quality.”
- It creates conviviality. Preparing a meal is a great way of spending quality time with the family.
- Learning how to cook leads to other kinds of learning: counting, fractions, measuring,…
- It’s low tech!
Tips to get your kids into cooking
- To begin with, ask them to help you on small tasks when you are cooking: slicing the tomatoes, picking basil, measuring flour… and explain what you are doing.
- Introduce them to cooking safety: hand washing, sanitary work surface, safety with knives and equipment.
- To pique their curiosity, make them smell your spice jars. They will be amazed by the different odors that exist. You can also play the spice jars game: make them guess which smell is which.
- Ask them to choose the recipe of a dish they would like to eat and cook it with them. It’s better to choose a simple and easy recipe without too many steps. It will give them motivation to pursue. What about pancakes?
- Make your kids responsible for the family meal once a month. They will be proud to act like the heads of the family and hearing “yum” from every family member will give them confidence.
- The first few times, don’t be too picky about the kitchen’s cleanness. Learning how to cook can be a messy business.
For other tips, check these 6 Mom-tested tips to teach your kids to cook.
Cooking ideas and recipes
- You can find easy and simple recipes on PBS Kitchen Explorers. We recommend the Fresh Raspberry, Sage and Ginger Soda and the Lasagna with Fresh Tomatoes and Basil.
- From infancy to adolescence, What Chefs Feed Their Kids: Recipes and Techniques for Cultivating a Love of Good Food helps you to guide your kids through their discovery of food. The recipes are a little bit more complicated but all yummy.
- California Department of Public Health published these fast & fun recipes for kids, from apple oatmeal to tasty tostadas.
- The Center for Science in the Public Interest published these 20 recipes to get kids cooking.
- The Food and Nutrition Service publishes these Recipes for Healthy Kids cookbook.
- You can check this thread on Reddit, we found some of our ideas there.
What about you, have you introduced your kids to cooking? What do you like to cook with them? What are your tips to get your kids into cooking?