Whether you find cooking to be a beautiful art or a messy ordeal, you have every reason to teach your kids how to cook if you’re a parent. With the holidays coming and kids getting time off from school, now is the perfect time to teach your little one(s) how to be a chef.
It’s been said that good cooking is an art form. The truth is, it’s much more than that. It’s a way to teach kids vital 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration. It invites kids to make connections to the broader world by asking, “Where does our food come from?” and “What is the history of this recipe?” And it allows them to apply what they are learning in school in a new context.
Measuring ingredients, scaling recipes up or down and rolling out dough to specific dimensions are frequent tasks in cooking or baking. They also test the math skills of young chefs since portions of ingredients are often read in fractions.
Cooking also brings science concepts to life. Take mayonnaise, for example. If you add egg yolks, lemon juice, mustard, sugar, and salt to the bowl of a food processor, and slowly add oil to it, you will get a creamy, smooth mayo. But if you add all the oil at once, you will get a broken, greasy mess. The process of making this provides the perfect opportunity for kids to learn that oil and water don’t usually mix and how an emulsion gets the two to play nicely–if you add the oil a little bit at a time.
And even if you fail while making a recipe, it’s ok: recipe failures help kids build resilience and will challenge kids to figure out how to improve. Beyond the practical skills, cooking builds character. It encourages kids to work with others to produce the final result and boosts their confidence by building independence.
If none of this convinces you, consider this: at the very least experimenting with different recipes will make your kids more open to new foods.
