Parenting is the most beautiful thing in the world, but the truth is that it occasionally becomes difficult, exhausting, and increasingly responsible. There is no “magic book” or a list of rules that can help you, but you can always turn to someone for advice. Every parent can make even the simplest game act as a professional animator for children because he enjoys entertaining them.
One of the common activities that parents use in their upbringing is cooking with their children.
You have decided to cook together with your child. You can do this interesting activity every day with your children from the age of four. This time you will not need a million toys but only material means such as food ingredients and others. So in addition to fun, you are doing something practical.
Experts recommend that during this joint activity, a lot of conversations be held with the children, it is necessary to have a great overview and provide support to the kid. The more you engage your kid, the more learning opportunities you provide. In this way, children will have fun, and on the other hand, they will have a direct insight into real objects, a sense of handling them, and the like.
This game achieves independent work, testing, and observation. Talk to your kid during this activity and make making food very instructive and interesting. Read below what are the other advantages behind this interesting game.
1. Encourages language development
Activities such as food preparation significantly enrich your child’s vocabulary. Apart from gaining self-confidence and researching by asking various questions, they also look for answers, practice communication skills, and everything else in that area.
They will ask you about all the basic processes, causal relationships, phenomena, objects, and everything else.
Have enough patience to explain to him in detail what he is asking you or something that you yourself can conclude is worth explaining. By introducing each step, he or she develops language skills even more. Our advice is to raise the learning game to a higher level and after a while suggest that the child guess the following ingredients that you would put in the food, items that you will use, or something similar.
2. Encourages motor development
Every step that kid takes during this activity is very important for his motor skills. Of course, when you understand what he or she is doing, and that can be some action with the test, cutting the dough with a cutter of various shapes, etc. you will find that these are all good exercises.
They contribute to greater strength and control. Although the child may be small and the only thing he does is manage various toys and objects, he will soon grow up and become mature for some other things as well. These things involve handling subjects that require fine motor skills and relate to academic skills. Cooking is an ideal way to prepare your kid for the skills he will need when writing, cutting, or coloring. Help him grow faster and have fun like you.
3. Encourages the development of mathematical abilities
You know that you have to take different measures into account when cooking. Most foods simply cannot be made in any other way. It also means that the more different ingredients you have in front of you, the more measures you have to work with. Although it has already become a matter of routine for you and you do not pay so much attention to it, for younger ones it will be real quantum physics.
In addition to realizing the importance of rules and following correct instructions, they learn to use different measures and thus practice mathematics. In this way, they adopt a sense of quantity through experience. According to the katanabana, it can simple as counting eggs and pouring water into a measuring cup.
4. Encourages the development of reading skills
As we have already said, they acquire knowledge of rules and instructions during food preparation. If they know how to read, they will enjoy following the instructions on the packaging directly. An even better way to practice this ability is to ask them to read recipes, so they may learn something new so they will be very happy the next time they show you what they have learned.
This example improves their self-confidence in addition to influencing the development of his skills. When cooking with younger children, we recommend that you start with lighter recipes that involve very few ingredients, small numbers, and generally fewer data. That way, it will be neither too difficult nor too easy for them, that is, you will adjust to their age and they will be able to adapt everything you imagined as a parent.
5. Encourages focusing and directing attention
First of all, cooking is a very interesting thing for children because they experience it as an extremely dynamic experience. There are simply many things happening at once, there are a lot of objects, shapes, colors, etc. Their senses are completely awakened when it comes to participating in this kind of activity. It all distracts them in a good way and makes them focused. So encouraged by your own interest, your little ones will develop very desirable abilities.
They will be quite concentrated on every segment of activities, they will pay attention to every detail, they will want to send everything and participate in everything. For them, it’s a very big deal, because they’re just doing the job that adults normally do. When you apply reading the recipe, you will realize that the focus and direction of attention will come by itself because the children will do their best to make the food turn out perfectly as per the recipe.
Among other things, they will use every opportunity to do everything in their power to make the dish turn out perfect because they want to treat themselves to a treat even more.
Conclusion
We have no doubt that you naturally manage to fulfill everything that is expected of you as a parent, and even more than that. However, all methods and games with children are tried very quickly or they outgrow them, they simply get bored or something else. If you have no idea how to animate your children, while they will enjoy the many benefits we have listed, our advice is definitely cooking with them.
I hope that you will have as much fun as your children and that you will have enough patience to see how they develop during their seemingly ordinary games. With just a little effort, you can make a playroom out of the house, be imaginative, and use everyday objects (adapted to the child’s age). Either way, at the end of the day, you will make something delicious for you and your family.