The Benefits of Cooking with Your Children
Children love doing what adults do. In fact, it’s very common for children to play house, imitating the tasks mothers and fathers do, such as cooking. But what if this wasn’t a simple game? What if you actually cooked with your children? This initiative is very beneficial for children.
If, as a parent, you commit yourself to teaching your children to cook easy and simple recipes, you won’t only be spending quality family time but you’ll also be favoring your children’s optimal development.
“Cooking with kids is not just about ingredients, recipes, and cooking. It’s about harnessing imagination, empowerment, and creativity.”
– Guy Fieri –
The benefits of cooking with your children
Replacing toy kitchens with real ones is a fantastic decision that all parents should make, since cooking with your children makes them acquire, enhance, and develop useful skills for everyday life in a fun and playful way.
Communication and language skills
To make a recipe together, it’s necessary to communicate effectively and be clear about the steps to follow, the utensils you’ll use, and the ingredients you need. This helps children acquire a large amount of vocabulary and conversation skills and allows them to learn to listen actively and to reason.
In addition, parents who are fluent in a foreign language can take the opportunity to teach their children to pronounce certain words in that language.
Healthy eating habits, one of the benefits of cooking with your children
By being involved in the kitchen, children are encouraged to try all types of foods, developing positive connections with them. Thus, they’re more likely to follow a varied and balanced diet, eating fruits, vegetables, and dairy products, among other foods.
Reading and math skills
To correctly follow the instructions of a recipe, it’s essential to know how to read and understand what’s been read. Thus, cooking helps children develop reading comprehension. Likewise, to be able to cook, it’s essential to have a basic command of certain mathematical concepts for counting and measuring foods.
Sensory and perceptual abilities
Preparing new recipes helps children discover and learn about new foods and experiment with their flavors, colors, and textures. This is ideal for sensory stimulation. In addition, it allows them to be able to differentiate types of foods, different textures, and the various flavors that exist, among other things.
Psychomotor skills
Learning to cook also provides physical benefits, since it involves handling many different foods and knowing how to use certain kitchen utensils. This positively influences the development of fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and hand-eye coordination.
Socio-emotional skills
By working together as a family to make a recipe, children learn that, many times, it’s necessary to cooperate and collaborate with others to achieve a common goal.
Furthermore, by feeling satisfied with the result, children begin to believe in their own abilities. In addition, they gain confidence in themselves, as well as in others. This allows them to grow both emotionally and socially.
Personal autonomy, another benefit of cooking with your children
Although you’re working together as a family to make a recipe, it’s necessary for you to make sure that each family member is in charge of an individual task. This way, children begin to do tasks under supervision and with help so that, little by little, they begin to become familiar with the kitchen and begin to do tasks both autonomously and independently.
For all these reasons, what are you waiting for to start cooking with your children? We encourage you to make easy recipes as a family!
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Prádanos-Nieto, A. (2015). La cocina como recurso didáctico en Educación Infantil (Trabajo de Fin de Grado). Universidad de Valladolid: Facultad de Educación de Palencia, Valladolid.