How Cooking with Kids Helps Their Development

According to the WHO life skills are “Abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life”

We’ve all learnt our life skills by observing others. See this post on the power of observational learning.

Something as basic as spending time in the kitchen with kids, is a massive opportunity for them to learn some essential life skills and create new neural pathways. Learning about food preparation and handling tools safely will teach kids how to lead, and provide healthful lives for themselves and their future families.

It also teaches them the crucial developmental skills they need in order to make progress in their learning now.

4 Developmental life skills kids learn in the kitchen

Physical skill development

Using tools

The use of tools teaches children that objects are defined by their function, and they begin thinking about how to classify objects – an important mathematical skill.  With the right tools and a little encouragement, young children prove to be quite capable… when given the chance. Resist the temptation to correct too much or to ‘’fix” their efforts.

Very young children can learn to chop and peel vegetables. Slightly older children from 5 or 6 up can certainly with a short blade knife, begin to learn to chop vegetables. Children as young as 3 can begin learning to chop by cutting up something soft like a banana with a plastic knife. Teach them how to hold the knife or vegetable peeler and to peel away from themselves and to keep their fingers tucked away. Vegetables to start learning about peeling, are carrots, sweet potatoes, zucchini, turnips, and potatoes. Ensure you place the vegetable on a non-slip surface so that your child can rest the vegetable on it while peeling.

Fine and gross motor

There is much research evidence around the impact of gross and fine motor development as a predictor of language development in infancy and early childhood https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02670/full

Some might say that in this technological driven world where children are increasingly learning with ipads and tablets, that fine and gross motor development are no longer important for learning. Writing still forms an important part of the educational system and children who are unable to write legibly place themselves at a disadvantage to those who can.

Writing has many cognitive benefits too. It influences reading and writing processing skills and there is also evidence that writing improves memory. Researchers have found that the physical act of writing creates unique pathways in the brain which resulted in those who wrote study notes by hand, remembered more content than those who typed them.

What does all this have to do with preparing food? Chopping, peeling, and stirring are all activities that develop muscles in the fingers, hands and arms thereby developing children’s fine and gross motor development through improved muscle tone and coordination, not to mention their ability to classify objects by their use and the sheer enjoyment they feel when spending time people they love.