Cooking With Kids - Let's Do it Together!

If you are searching for an activity that can get your kids involved, then cooking with kids is a fantastic option.

You might be surprised to know that kids love trying out easy recipes in the kitchen and poking around with the cookery. If you can teach your kids to cook healthy dishes then this good habit would stay with them even when they grow up. Let us have a look at the benefits of cooking with kids and the importance of telling them- "Let's do it together!"

1. Instilling good habits - Kids are very impressionable and anything which is taught at this age remains ingrained in their lifestyle for the rest of their lives. Hence it is imperative that you teach your kid to cook nutritious and healthy food at an early age, because afterwards they would be subject to temptations of junk and fast foods. If you want to instill sound habits in your kids, this stage is ideal.

2. Boosting of self-esteem - When a child finds that he/she is accomplishing a task successfully, his/her self-esteem gets boosted. Kids want to contribute in their own small way to their families and in this way they feel that they are doing something worthwhile.

3. Passing of family values and tradition - When you spend quality time with your kids, the family bonding becomes stronger. These priceless moments would remain etched in their minds forever. Later when they grow up or become old, they would pass on the things learnt to the next generation.

4. Teaching practical lessons in math, science, language and creativity - A kid would learn to count, measure, sort and work with fractional quantities, which would strengthen their fundamentals in math. The initial experience of experimenting with various combinations and proportions of ingredients is an integral part of learning science. When the kid is taught to read a certain recipe or to categorically write down a list of ingredients that need to be bought, he/she is imparted language training. Improvising and fine-tuning require imagination and creativity and those are also brought into play when a kid learns to cook.

5. Making them self-reliant - It is observed that many grown-up individuals find it hard to live outside their homes, as they do not know how to prepare even the basic recipes. Cooking with kids would easily address this issue and your kids would face no hassles when they grow up.

6. Teaching teamwork - If you teach your kids how to cook, participate actively with them and bring some of their close friends along, they would learn teamwork very easily. They would learn the tasks of assigning and taking work. Sharing the workload and co-operating with others are extremely important in successful teamwork. When your kids interact freely with their friends, their communication skills also improve and initial shyness which is present in many kids also gets dissipated.

Hence, whenever you find some quality time to spend with your kids, ask them to come to the kitchen and notice the elation on their faces when you shout- - "Let's do it together!"

Aldric Chang is a creative entrepreneur who is at the moment building kids games and free hidden object games. He runs an animation studio and his creative accomplishments span across the production of several hundred animation projects, casual games, music compositions, cartoon animated series and a virtual world for kids.