Kids in the Kitchen

I love cooking with my kids.  As they get older, cooking with them gets easier, and we are having a great time in the kitchen.  Cooking with kids has lots of developmental benefits like improving fine motor skills, math (counting, fractions, numbers, measuring, more/less concepts), reading and vocabulary development (reading recipes, ingredients, kitchen tools and procedures), nutrition knowledge, science concepts (reactions, gas/liquid/solid, heat transfer, bacteria, growing food from seeds), and safety skills.  But the best benefits are learning a life skill and making memories with mom!

Kids can help in the kitchen at almost every age.  These are some ways your kids might be ready to help in the kitchen:

Toddlers:
-Give them a plastic knife and small chunk of food to cut
-Help dump out measuring cups and spoons
-Help stir
-Press oven and microwave buttons

Preschool & Kindergarten Age (all of the above, plus):
-Getting out ingredients and measuring cups, taking off lids
-Measuring and dumping out measuring cups and spoons alone
-Cutting with a table knife or plastic knife
-Reading parts of a recipe
-Cracking eggs


Elementary School Age (all of the above, plus):
-Using the can opener, garlic press, hand mixer
-Starting to use an oven or stove with help (i.e. flipping pancakes on a griddle, putting a cookie sheet in the oven)
-Grating cheese
-Using the blender with supervision
-Reading and following simple recipes

Several months ago, Autumn announced that she was going to make lunch for us.  All by herself, she got a big carton of yogurt out of the fridge, spooned it into a few small bowls, then sliced up a banana to top each yogurt.  She was SO proud and told everyone she saw for the rest of the day that she made lunch all by herself!  With that in mind, here are some simple meals and snacks that preschool age kids can do completely independently:

-yogurt and sliced bananas (add granola and other fruit for a parfait)
-toast or a sandwich with butter, cinnamon-sugar, jam, peanut butter, avocado, honey
-crackers and string cheese
-cereal and milk
-peel hard boiled eggs
-snack mix (a mix of anything you have: pretzels, chips, cereal, craisins, raisins, chocolate chips, candy, popcorn, crackers, etc.)
-Ants on a Log (celery sticks with peanut butter and dried fruit bits on top)
-veggie and dip (They can arrange veggies on a plate if they are already cut up in the fridge-- baby carrots, sliced cucumbers, sliced peppers, celery sticks, etc.)
-fruit and dip (bananas, clementines, grapes, berries, pre-cut apples, etc.)

Of course, it's also really fun to make special treats with your kids.  Here are some fun treats we've made together:
-Smoothies
-Dirt Cups (The kids at a group play date helped measure milk and stir it into instant chocolate pudding mix, crush Oreos, and spoon those into cups along with some gummy worms-- everyone loved helping!)
-Homemade popsicles, including frozen chocolate or yogurt covered bananas
-Cookies (Snickerdoodles are fun because they can roll around the dough in cinnamon-sugar; chocolate chip cookies are fun because they can eat lots of chocolate chips :)
-Chocolate suckers (Melt chocolate chips in a baggie in the microwave, snip off a corner, pour into any shape onto a popsicle stick set on wax or parchment paper-- you can do a ghost at Halloween time, heart for Valentine's, etc.)
-Muffins

Lastly, my kids always love the dinners that they can help with by putting on their own toppings.  Some of their favorites are:
-Salads (green salad, chef salad, taco salad, Asain salads, etc.)
-Tacos
-Omelets
-Pizza
-Hawaiian Haystacks

What are some things you like to make in the kitchen with your kids?