Researchers found that the number of hours parents spend cooking at home can significantly influence what children choose to eat away from home. Cooking with your kids can help get them interested in trying healthy foods and building the right behaviors while they are young grooming them into teenager’s and adulthood.
Food edification in children at an early age has multiple benefits;
Cooking and bonding
Cooking with kids is one of the most valuable family activities you can engage in together. Enables kids to feel responsible and part of something bigger than them. Gives them a sense of responsibility having been entrusted with an important task to be done on their own.Cooking enhances the bonding moments facilitating children to share conversations about moments in their lives.
Cooking gives a sense of achievement, pride and accomplishment
- Cooking augments educational skills in individuals exposed to kitchen techniques
- Older kids appreciate opportunities to learn or improve their cooking skills, an excellent avenue to a start of what they can cook for themselves when left on their own. They could develop an interest in trying different cuisines and be intrigued about skills in the kitchen.
- Cooking educates children about focusing on following step-by-step instructions to get to a finished result. Influences their reading, comprehension and following directions.
- Cooking teaches children how to adapt to varied culture settings and embed learning’s in their lives by experience
- Helping understand the value of healthy food and developing good food habits. Exposure to the shelves teaches them a little of where their food comes from and also explicates the value of that food.
- School-age kids can learn some cooking basics and use their math skills as they help combine ingredients for recipes in different proportions. Quantity, the fractions, and conversions are all important aspects of cooking. The measures guide is an excellent example to make use of fractions.
Cooking influences the lifestyle
- Reducing the number of meals eaten outside the home resulting in the consumption of healthier, low-calorie meals.
- Having structured times for family meals.
- Children are more likely to sit down to a family meal when they helped prepare it.
- Parents get to spend quality time with their kids.
- Children spend minimal time in front of the TV or computer while engaged in the kitchen
- Junk food is discouraged when meals are cooked at home.
The kitchen is the heart of your home. Encourage children to join you in the kitchen while you build your perfect home. Remember not everything may turn out perfect, but everyone learned in the process.