Parenting Today
Cooking with your kids is a fantastic way to spend time together. And following recipes teaches children an essential life skill. It also provides multiple learning opportunities, including gaining valuable math skills like counting, measuring, and fractions.
Plus, there’s the incredible payoff in tasting their delicious culinary creations. Let’s look at the benefits of cooking with your child and how to blend some basic math lessons into your dishes.
Cooking with Your Child Has Multiple Benefits
One of the most significant benefits of cooking with your child is the wonderful opportunity it gives you to spend quality one-on-one time together. It also gives busy, multitasking parents a break from their hectic daily routine to do something fun.
In teaming up to cook, you can also introduce your children to healthy foods — and help them enjoy foods they cooked themselves that they might not otherwise try.
A study in the Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research explains that children develop their eating habits during the first few years of life. Thus, the earlier kids learn to like tasty fruits, veggies, and nutrient-dense foods, the better.
Other benefits include:
- Learning organizational skills as they gather the ingredients, bowls, pots, pans, and cooking utensils they need for a recipe
- Learning an essential life skill — cooking — because we need to eat to survive.
- Learning problem-solving skills
- Learning math skills in counting, measuring, and fractions
- Expanding their taste buds
- When they finish the recipe, they feel a sense of accomplishment, especially when they eat and enjoy it.
Cooking Math Lessons
As you guide your young chef through a recipe, you can weave in basic math concepts.
For example, if you are making pizza dough that requires 2 ½ cups of flour, do the following to teach your child about measuring, counting, and fractions:
- Have your child fill a one-cup measuring cup. Teach them to level it off, dump the contents into a mixing bowl, and count “one” out loud.
- Repeat the process and count “two” out loud.
- Show them how the ½ cup measuring cup is smaller than the one cup, about “half” as small. Have them fill the 1/2 cup, level it, and add it to the mixing bowl. Then say, “Two cups plus a ½ cup is 2 ½ cups.”
You can also show them each of the measurement levels of a Pyrex measuring cup. In the pizza dough example, you can:
- Have your child find the 2-cup line at the top, fill the flour up to that line, and then dump it into the mixing bowl.
- Next, have your child find the ½ cup mark, fill the flour to the line, and dump it in the mixing bowl.
To teach preschoolers and young toddlers counting, have them count and add 12 cherry tomatoes to a salad. You can also tell them to count the recipe ingredients on your counter.
For example, point to the bag of flour and say, “Here’s ingredient number one: flour.” Then, have them name and count the rest of the ingredients: eggs, two, milk, three, and so on. You can also show them the numbers on the measuring spoon and tell them to read what they are.
Other Ways to Explain Fractions
Stanford master’s graduate Ashley Moulton founded an educational website and app called Nomster Chef so kids can learn while cooking with their parents or caregivers.
Moulton suggests explaining fractions while cooking with your child by dividing a single item into four slices. For example, make a mini pizza and then:
- Remove one piece and tell them it is one out of four total pieces or “one quarter” of the entire pizza.
- Let your child take out another piece and explain that two out of four pieces remain or ½ remains.
- Add a slice back and explain that three out of four pieces are now there, or ¾ of the entire pizza. Put the last slice back and explain how 4/4 pieces equal one whole pizza.
You can also use a one-cup measuring cup and a ¼ measuring cup and demonstrate how four ¼ cups of oats will fill the one-cup measuring cup. Or ask your child, “How many of your cups fit into my cup?”
In introducing fractions, explain how to find the ½ teaspoon measuring spoon. Tell them to look for the number “1” over a “2” and the letters “tsp.”
Easy Kids’ Recipes
Nomster Chef offers easy and fun illustrated kids’ recipes in a digital picture book, along with teaching tips for parents. Examples include a PB&J Burrito, Teriyaki Chicken and Broccoli, Banana Pumpkin Pancakes, and Loaded Sweet Potato Nachos, to name a few.
Busy Little Chefs also offers lots of easy, yummy recipes including an Orange Coconut Smoothie, Quick & Easy Apple Snacks, and Easy Italian Mozzarella & Ricotta Cheese Calzone.
Whatever you decide to make with your kids, cooking together can become a treasured shared experience with many learning opportunities, good food, and a heaping helping of love.
