How to Start Cooking with Kids?

Are you looking for fun and easy ways get your kids involved with cooking and helping in the kitchen?

Cooking with kids can help:

• Build basic skills such as math, counting, and measuring.
• Boost confidence and skills such as following directions and problem solving.
• Learn about nutrition, language, and history in a fun environment.
• Improve fine motor skills and hand to eye coordination.
• Inspire creativity, and many more. 

Check out a list of benefits of cooking with kids ages 2-12.

It is never too early to teach your kids about gardening and healthing eating. Kids love to help, so why don’t you take the time to teach the life-long skills of cooking and food prep?

MapsCookingKids.com shares resources and instructional videos on how to teach your kids how to cook, how to have fun gardening with your kids and educating them on the importance of nutritious foods, and how to use food to enrich language learning.

Why Language Learning and Cooking?

When is the best time to begin learning a new language? Some people believe that it’s impossible to master language learning at a later age. The good news is that belief simply isn’t true. Research shows that earlier is better. In the article written by Krista Byers-Heinlein and Casey Lew-Williams, Bilingualism in the Early Years: What the Science Says, it states, “There may not be a sharp turn for the worse at any point in development, but there is an incremental decline in language learning abilities with age (Birdsong & Molis, 2001; Hakuta, Bialystok, & Wiley, 2003).” So, if you want your child to be bilingual, it’s better to start early.

Our brains and our environment are more conducive to language development earlier in life. As infants and toddlers, our children are exposed to a variety of people and situations for language development. They have parents, caregivers, teachers, family members, and friends speaking to them minute by minute in their home, on the playground, in daycare or school, at the store, etc.

Why not give children rich, diverse, and engaging opportunities to learn languages around cooking, food prep, gardening, and family conversations?