Food makes my heart sing and Kitchen is my happy place. I also have my food blog here. I learnt to cook after I got married and became a regular cook once my little one turned 6 months old. We were following baby led weaning and since then I always cooked in front of an audience translation: little boy.
I did not have any help at that point in time and little one was always hanging around in the background watching me cook from a distance.
So yours truly decided to involve him in the kitchen and help me out. He cannot help me out a-z in the kitchen but there are some pretty awesome ways we could work together in harmony.
And yeah, there is loads of mess to clear later and a heavy sink to be cleaned- but the fun makes up to it.
This week we did not have any shelf activities, we instead focused only on our cooking and baking.
Check out my baking post here 🙂
Corn Peeling
Egg Cracking
Egg Yolk Separating
Egg Whisking
Peas Peeling
Cheese Foil Unwrapping
Banana Chopping
Curry Leaves Picking
Paneer Chopping
Grapes Washing
Loading the fridge after grocery shopping
Leveling cracker crust for cheese cake
Peeling Orange Skin
I do have a few other kitchen photos clicked, and have more lined up so I could post them together. So keep watching this space for more uploaded pictures 🙂
Isn’t cooking together a great way to bond? A little mess would do no harm right?
And let them also taste thereby they feel accomplished and part of the whole cooking experience.
Please follow our Montessori kitchen board to see all other kitchen works which amuse me from all around the web 🙂
Please do all this in an adult supervision and stay away from any allergy causes if your child has any.
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Also we haven’t started to deal with heated appliances yet, so please do any at your own risk.
You might like to shop these kitchen items for your child
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Thanks for this Melani. We have been doing this to spend time and now you have made me happy by stating all skills kids children learn via each 🙂
Lovely! My son too loves to be involved in the kitchen chores! He shells peas, removes the leaves from spinach and methi bunches, peels pomegranate etc . Ofcourse the mess is more but he has fun! Thanks for more ideas
Melani, love this post.I have been doing at least three to four activities you have mentioned above.will try others also.
As I don’t do any diy activiites much for my lo, this is the only option left apart from reading and involve with her in some toys.
Both my kids love to remove the peas from pods, its their favourite… They interested to count how many peas in a pod they got… Ask me to prepare shapes dosa… they love to mix the batter for cooking….
Proud to say that my 3 yo helped me wash the dishes today after dinner. Even the glassware! While doing it he kept saying, “Mama I love doing this!” 😀
I am going to try all these in the near future. Thank you for sharing this.
This post is perfect, I was looking for such ideas as I always limit my son to playing with onions and potatoes. Loved it.
All the activities that you have mentioned are doable in terms of safety with the kids. Also these will help the kid develop hia fine motor skills as well as gross motor skills. Loved your post.
Lovely.Way to go!Of course your toddler is going to have precious warm memories of your kitchen time together.
Such amazing and easy ways to make the little one get excited about food and cooking! I am saving this link 🙂 thanks
Kids love these kitchen timeouts. My kids enjoy peeling, sorting, beating, washing and also rolling the dough. We end up laughing at the weird shapes of roti they make. 😀 but yeah it’s good fun.
Great post, I’ve written something similar a few months ago in regards to working with kids in the kitchen and how it makes them better eaters!
I recently wrote a post about kid friendly non heat cooking recipes. You mentioned some great and simple ways to involve them .
What wonderful activities! I can see that your toddler is holding a sharp object to cut paneer. When did you introduce it to him, and what signs of readiness did you look for?
These are some great ideas. I think its the right time for me to introduce this to babyT
These are great ideas. This really good to involve kids from beginning in understanding the kitchen work. My son is 3 but he helps me so much when it come to doing things that he as per his age allows. For example pealing the pea, wiping the plates and putting bottles in the fridge. These ways our kids become self-sufficient and learns to respect kitchen work that very few recognize.