Getting kids involved in cooking is something every parent thinks of doing sooner or later. However, as the saying goes about the horse and water, it isn’t easy to get kids involved in cooking, whether we are talking of the troubling threes or the indifferent 12s. Contrary to popular belief, children vary in their capacity to understand how to work in a kitchen but if you start them young, and don’t intimidate them with lengthy sermons, chances are they will develop a life-long affinity towards kitchen work. Kitchen skills are a necessary part of a child’s personality, which would help the child throughout its life, especially in case they have to stay alone in a new city for study or work.

So, gather yourself, put on your thinking cap and bring out the teacher in you! Let’s teach the kids some kitchen skills to carry forward in life - 

Children who are under 3 years in age are generally just making sense of the world around. But the positive part of their personalities is that they are ‘eager’ to know all that is out there. And kitchen remains one of their most favourite adventure destinations, if you know what we mean! In fact, the kids of this age love to ‘help out’ their moms and grandmas in the kitchen. So put that curiosity to good use and teach them to use safe tools like blunt cookie cutters, which they can use to share cookies of their own choice. They can help in washing veggies, mashing boiled potatoes, sprinkling cake decorations (though this could get messy very soon!) and sort out plastic containers and lids. 

With the increased ability to follow instructions, kids in this age group can do a lot more! You can use their skills to cut out pastry or pasta shapes, of course with a safe tool. They can weigh, pour, or spoon out ingredients using weighing scales. You can ask them to cut food items like butter, mushrooms, strawberries, using a plastic knife, of course! The kids can sieve flour into a bowl, use a light wooden pestle and mortar to crush ingredients, spread butter or icing, and even do some light kneading, which would definitely be lot of fun!

Children between 5 and 7 years of age are old enough to be promoted to more serious kitchen work like slicing, grating and beating. Whether you want to use a small or big knife to help them learn cutting is up to you. Then there are scissors too, which can be used to snip herbs or greens for cooking. Grating is another easy work to do but do keep an eye on them lest they get their fingers too close to the grater. Use their fingertips to mix water into the flour. You’ll see how efficient that turns out to be. You can also make them peel oranges, litchis, bananas, or boiled eggs for eating. Encourage kids of this age group to set up a table before the family sits down to eat, provided you don’t use chinaware to eat regular meals!

Teaching kitchen skills for kids is an important life lesson! This blog will help you make it a fun lesson too.