Carrots for Michaelmas

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Kids in the Kitchen: Introducing Your Children to Cooking

September 4, 2012 By Haley 9 Comments

Welcome to Carrots! I'm so glad you're here. This is where I share thoughts on liturgical living, faith, parenting, culture, and an extra dose of Jane Austen. You can sign up for my email newsletter here to stay in touch, or look me up on Instagram!

Welcome to Carrots! I'm so glad you're back. You can sign up for my email newsletter here to stay in touch, or look me up on Instagram!

From the time our firstborn could sit up in a high chair and watch us cook, we would hand him some measuring cups and spoons to play with so he could “participate.” Our kitchen is definitely the center of our home and we like to have our kids in the kitchen with us. And kids LOVE to be kitchen helpers; however, sometimes cooking with children can be more frustrating than fun. Here’s some tips for a great kitchen experience for all:

 It’s important to create an environment in which they can safely tackle new skills so they have as much freedom as is age appropriate to explore the world of cooking. I have two must-have items for kitchen helpers. One is a learning tower like the one Benjamin is using in the photo above. They are a bit out of our price range so my husband Daniel made one. Stools are easy to slip off of or flip over (especially, we discovered, if you are a constantly squirming 3-year-old boy). To avoid having to say, “Careful!” a thousand times, use a learning tower which makes helping at counter-height much easier for kids. It also keeps them in one place which seriously improves my son’s ability to focus on the task at hand.

My newest favorite children’s cooking item is this vegetable crinkle cutter that Benjamin calls his “knife.” It has a curvy blade that isn’t super sharp and is awesome for teaching kids to chop vegetables. Obviously, young children still need adult supervision to use this item and need to be taught knife safety skills. Benjamin has been loving getting to help with chopping and in one sitting chopped 16 carrots, and 8 potatoes for some slow cooker beef stew I was making. He was SO proud of himself and made sure everyone knew he had contributed to the dinner preparation.

Give yourself plenty of time whenever you tackle a kitchen task with kids in tow. If you are rushing to complete a meal, it’s hard (at least for me) not to get frustrated with the constant interruptions and inevitable minor disasters. A relaxed cooking environment gives all the tiny cooks (and mom and dad) a better experience in the kitchen.

Be OK with messes! Everything in the kitchen will be messier with children helping. Just embrace the mess and don’t let it get in the way of having a great time.

These are some good cooking tasks for children, listed from easiest to hardest:

  • Dumping: After you measure out an ingredient, allow your child to be in charge of adding it to the bowl.
  • Mixing: Let your child mix ingredients together with a large spoon or whisk. It’s helpful to offer a large bowl in comparison to the amount of mixture to prevent ingredients from spilling over the sides during energetic mixing.
  • Kneading: Kids love to knead bread and punch it down after it rises!
  • Cutting in butter: This is a more difficult skill but a great one to introduce your child to when preparing something like biscuits. Benjamin tires of it after a few minutes but he’s starting to get the hang of it.
  • Chopping: We didn’t start letting Benjamin do this task until just last week. You will be the best judge of when your child is ready.

Sometimes having helpers in the kitchen is a wonderful, warm, and fuzzy experience. Sometimes it just goes wrong. A couple days ago when Benjamin was helping me roll out pizza dough, everything went to shambles. He stopped following instructions and I had a shorter fuse than usual because we had time limits. We just had to give up for the afternoon. It happens. But we’ll pick up again next time and I can’t wait to see him run to grab his apron with a big smile on his face!

 

Kids in the Kitchen

Do you let your kids help in the kitchen? How do you make it a good experience for all?

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Filed Under: Children, Motherhood Tagged With: children, cooking, food, kitchen

Comments

  1. Melissa says

    September 4, 2012 at 12:11 pm

    Yay 🙂 he looks like he is loving the chopping! Great post!!

    Reply
    • Haley says

      September 5, 2012 at 1:26 am

      I’m amazed at how it keeps his attention! Thank you so much!

      Reply
  2. Lynn says

    September 5, 2012 at 3:32 am

    I let my 18 month old son help by dumping ingredients and mixing (with lots of supervision so everything doesn’t end up getting dumped out on the floor).

    I love the learning tower – that is such a great idea! I showed this post to my husband tonight and asked him to make one too. Thanks for the tip! 🙂

    Reply
    • Haley says

      September 5, 2012 at 4:24 pm

      The learning tower has definitely been a big hit at our house 🙂

      Reply
  3. Kaitlin @ More Like Mary says

    September 5, 2012 at 2:07 pm

    I’m definitely going to remember the knife idea!

    Reply
    • Haley says

      September 5, 2012 at 4:31 pm

      Hannah will love it!

      Reply
  4. Hannah @ Dualing Moms says

    September 6, 2012 at 6:10 pm

    “..during energetic mixing” – I know all about that one 🙂

    Great idea with the knife – I’ll definitely be looking into one of those. We usually let our son use a butter knife, but chopping harder vegetables with that can be tricky. I’m all ears on anyway I can get my little one involved in the kitchen! He usually gets bored after about 5 minutes 🙂

    Reply
    • Haley says

      September 7, 2012 at 12:24 am

      Benjamin’s attention span is really short, too. Always has been. (Lucy’s the opposite, she can sit and play with one thing forever). But chopping up veggies has definitely captivated him!

      Reply
  5. Harlow's Harvest says

    September 5, 2020 at 12:54 am

    Great visuals and tips, Haley! I hope your post will motivate parents to bring kids into the kitchen at an early age. Thanks!

    Reply

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Welcome! I’m Haley Stewart, a bookish mama of four and wife to a beekeeper. Writer, speaker, podcaster, and Catholic convert. Homeschooling, bacon-eating, and bright red lipstick-wearing Jane Austen aficionado. My first book, The Grace of Enough: Pursuing Less and Living More in a Throwaway Culture is available now!

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