In honor of GPL’s Now We’re Cooking! collection spotlight, opens a new window, here are five ways to include young children when you cook or bake!
- Take your children with you when you go to the grocery store. Bringing children with allows them to see where their food comes from and what raw ingredients look like before a meal is on their plate. Plus, this is a great opportunity for you to introduce new vocabulary words: rutabaga, clementine, and turmeric oh my!
- Let your child help you prepare vegetables and fruit. You can set up an area for them to help wash produce, or prepare produce for a recipe. If you don’t have a child-safe knife set, opens a new window, your child can still work on their fine motor skills by tearing lettuce for a salad or squeezing oranges to make juice just using their hands.
- Have your child help you measure and pour ingredients. It’s very easy for even toddlers to help count out loud when you’re adding four cups of water to your pot. And cooking/baking is a delicious way to introduce your preschooler or early school-age child to fractions!
- Encourage your child to try different foods—taste your recipe and how it changes as you cook. Being a taste-tester can even help a picky eater feel more invested in their meal and more likely to try a new meal.
- Check out a cookbook from the library— Kids in the Kitchen, opens a new window and Kitchen Adventures with Favorite Characters, opens a new window —two booklists bound to get your taste buddies going. Or read some of our favorite picture books, opens a new window about making food together to get your child excited about working in the kitchen!
These books will have your children putting dinner on the table before you know it.
Cook up some fun with your kids with these recipes featuring their favorite characters.
Get your child excited about helping in the kitchen with these fabulous picture book and board book reads all about little chefs!
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