5 Reasons Why You Should Bake and Cook with Your Child

I wouldn’t call myself a master baker. In fact, if you asked T he would say that some of my cooking was sub-par at best. Despite this, when it comes to kids and the kitchen, I find that getting them involved in making things that they eat is not only a great activity but also helps to foster a lot of learning.

How?

A lot of early childhood education is based on the concept of learning through play or hands on learning, and this is a subject that I'm going to get into at a later date. As more and more research is done into the way children learn, we are discovering that having kids sit at a desk and do work sheet is not a way that all kids learn. Many children grasp concepts such as language and maths through hands on activities and it’s been found that it sticks in their mind a lot better this way. My brother, J, for example was a kid who could sit at a desk and would soak knowledge up like a sponge this way while we had cousins who learnt a lot better by getting out and being hands on.

When it comes to young children, however, learning through play has been found to be the more effective as their attention spans are not fully developed and kids just want to play rather than sit down and look at flashcards. It's why a lot of the tools that I've currently got in my Etsy shop are based around the idea of using them in games and the like.

What is also great about learning through play is that often kids don’t realise that they’re learning. They think that they’re just having fun!
So with all that in mind, Baking and cooking is a great way for kids to get hands on with their learning while also serving a purpose which is to feed the family. So with the reason why hands on learning is great for young kid is out of the way, lets go deeper into what kids are learning while they are baking and cooking.

Fractions

Many kids under the age of 5 have no idea what a fraction is, cooking and baking is a great way to introduce them. You see the cups, teaspoons and tablespoons that we use to measure things are all visual representations of fractions with a 1 cup being a whole and the smaller cups being the broken up pieces of that whole. 
While baking, telling them what each measurement is allows children to get a visual of what a fraction is so when it comes to doing them in maths they have a general idea of a fraction is that has something to do with their lives that is fun. So when they’re trying to working out how many quarters are in a whole, they’re able to make the connection to the cake they baked with you and go from there. 

Counting

I usually find some way for this to be included and that is because counting is one of those fundamental skills that kids are going to need to learn before they start school. They often have to know how to count to 20, so I like to try and incorporate it into play a lot as a result.

With baking, it's honestly one of the easiest things that baking and cooking allows them to learn. If they're helping you get all the ingredients you're counting how many of each item. If you're measuring out 3 cups of flour, they're helping you count those cups. You can even get them to stir a certain number of times as well. Its all up to what you can come up with.

Learning About Cultures

I grew up in a very white and very christian town. You had the usual chinese takeaways but I didn't get exposed to a lot of others foods until I moved to Sydney. One of the best years I had as a nanny was when I worked as a live-in to a Jewish family. I learnt a lot about their culture and how their culture centres around the foods that they make and share. I shared a lot about my own up bringing with the kids and the very traditional, country food that I knew how to make.

It was from this year that I really learnt how important experiencing different cultural food and the making of those foods were. Cooking and baking new foods from different cultures with your kids can be an amazing learning experience as they learn about different spices, why certain cultures eat certain things and the spiritual belief behind some of the foods those cultures eat.

Great for Fine Motor Development

You read right. Baking and cooking are great for those fine motor movements. Fine motor muscles are all the small muscles that the body uses, so your fingers, hands, wrists, etc. You use your hands a lot while cooking and baking, from peeling things to kneading dough, and while you're doing so you're using all those fine motor muscles.

Developing fine motor muscles when kids are young is important because they're often the ones that they're going to use a lot throughout their life. For example: you may think that holding a pen is a very easy thing but it's been found getting kids to do things with tongs helps to develop those same fine motor skills and kids later have better pencil control.

Teaches Life Skills

One day you are going to send your child out into the world and they're going to need to know certain life skills. Starting early with skills like baking and cooking will allow them to build their confidence so that once they are out in the wide world they will be able to fend for themselves.

Teaching kids to cook and bake from a early age allows those necessary skills to develop. Now your not going to leave them alone to cook for a while but starting early will allow for them one day to be able to do so. This is one of the things my own parents made sure me and my brothers knew before we left home and by the time I was 13 she was leaving me to get vegetables ready and on to cook while she got clothes off the line. Now I may not be a master chef but I did move out of the house able to cook which is a skill we all need to know.

What is your favourite thing to bake/cook?