Teamwork Works Wonders

This back-to-school season, get off to a great start with a little bit of planning, a dash of simplifying your life and sprinkle generously with team play to make the busiest time of year more fun and more rewarding for the whole family – it really does work!

More time together means less overtime for you

Years of squeezing plasticine qualifies your kids for many hands-on (or should we say hands-in?) kitchen tasks, from mixing meatloaf to shmushing canned tomatoes for pasta sauce. The deeper kids delve and dive into an activity, the more they end up liking it! And while a three-year-old will get so absorbed in his job, he will mix the contents of a large bowl indefinitely, older kids can safely handle chopping and peeling duties.

As for teens and pre-teens, whether they make and toss a simple salad or engineer an entire meal, helping out in the kitchen makes them develop a can-do attitude. They feel empowered! It may be total chaos at first, but it’s the kind of controlled chaos from which fond memories are made... and great family pictures taken!

Managing lunches and leftovers

While others clean up, how about designating one young person as Official Expert of Repackaging Leftovers into Lunches? The same family member can make sure the ice packs get put back in the freezer for tomorrow’s cheese cubes and yogurt, and can keep the stock of lunch bags, wrappings and juice boxes organized and replenished.

Divide and conquer in the cereal aisle

Instead of spending untold amounts of your energy fending off demands for junk food at the grocery store, why not try divvying up your shopping list and your kids into a dairy squad and a fruit and veggie squad, for example. While the job may or may not get done faster, the kids will learn a ton about quantity, quality, value and responsibility.

Mapping out meal time

Planning is an important life skill and what better way for your child to learn than by helping organize the week’s cooking and shopping activities. Make a list of meals your family loves and stick it up on the fridge. Use it to control variety and as a memory aid for making shopping lists. Assign the task of collecting all the recipes on your list – customized to your family’s taste – to one child for handy keeping in the family recipe binder.

Kids love hands-on activities, and team meal prep is easily worked into your daily routine. Added benefit: when your kids have a hand in making the food, they’ll come to appreciate your labours a bit more while learning valuable life skills, and best of all, they may actually want to eat it.