Cooking with the Kids: Fun, Tasty, Healthy

Making your own meals and snacks is an excellent way to develop healthy eating habits while enjoying extra tasty dishes. It's never too early to acquire these good habits. Engaging younger members of the family can help them acquire these habits while turning a daily task into a shared pleasure.

Children are often naturally curious about what's happening on the kitchen counters. Why not put that curiosity to good use? Getting to say “I made this!” is a source of pride that can add extra enjoyment to your kids' meals.

Something for every age

To make the experience safe and enjoyable for everyone, adjust tasks according to age and abilities:

• Decorate and enhance: Even a two- or three-year-old will be happy to help you shred herbs with his fingers or drop fresh berries on top of yogurt.

• Measure and pour: All children have fun measuring ingredients. They can easily fill a measuring cup with flour, using a spoon, or measure milk, using a small pitcher.

• Mix well: Young children enjoy seeing the transformation that results from whipping eggs and milk into an omelette, or mixing up dry and wet ingredients for a batch of homemade muffins.
• Cut to size: Grating cheese or cutting vegetables requires teaching safe methods, but will reward older children with a sense of accomplishment. For younger children, a butter knife is often perfect for cutting foods.
• Get cooking: Once your children can work their way around a stove, they'll like making pancakes or baking pizza with their own choice of toppings.

As with many activities, making food with children will require a little more supervision. Nevertheless, if you think of meal preparation as a family activity and if tasks are well assigned, it can truly be a lot of fun!

Besides contributing to the development of healthy eating habits, cooking is an activity that can teach your children several things. For example, by helping out, children can explore cooking utensils and foods, and discover new ones! They will also be more inclined to taste what they have cooked themselves, and this is an undeniable benefit for parents who often have to deal with picky eaters.

Finally, relax and try to keep things fun. A little bit more mess is worth the long-term pleasure family cooking can bring. If your kids really get into it, who knows, they might just cook a whole meal for you, one day!

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