We know that toddlers are curious by nature. They observe everything that we do, and they want to do it too. They get excited about wiping a table, folding clothes, and dressing themselves. However, there is something else that attracts them a lot: the kitchen work. For many months, your toddler has seen you cook, cut, peel, prepare, and serve delicious meals for the family and guests. Naturally, he will want to live that experience too. In this month´s article, we will look at the many possibilities we can offer our toddlers in the kitchen and how independence works when they are preparing food.
Food has always been a necessity for every civilization; it gives us energy and nutrients, helping us maintain health and replace or repair cells. Once our children start eating solids, we tend to center our attention on what kind of food we will offer them. We look for healthy and tasty options and might get frustrated if our child does not like them or does not show any interest in eating them.
Did you know that your child can help you prepare meals and snacks? This is an excellent opportunity for children to understand and appreciate food in its natural state; we want to give them a foundation of reality. Many of us are used to getting our plate with the food ready to eat, but we are not aware of the characteristics of each ingredient nor the process they had to undergo before we see them beautifully displayed on our plate. Allow your child to be part of the preparation of the snack or meal; it will open the doors to many multi sensorial experiences, refinement of fine motor skills, vocabulary enrichment, mathematical concepts, and most of all, interest and enthusiasm for eating it. A child that can prepare his snack independently will be motivated to eat it and will be able to appreciate its qualities since he was the one who made it.
Start with simple snacks like spreading butter on bread or peeling a banana or clementine. As you observe him mastering these first experiences, start showing him how to use a peeler, smash, grate, cut, use tongs, and manipulate small ingredients like grapes or blueberries, etc.
Food preparation is not only the action of cutting or spreading an ingredient, but the sequence also starts since we wash our hands before touching food, then we clean the vegetables/fruits to be used and take the cutting board or plate out.
Observe your child, analyze how many steps of a sequence he can do successfully, and create a series for him. If this is the first time he is helping you, then you might want to have all veggies already washed and the cutting board ready to use. Still, as he develops more concentration and gets comfortable in the food preparation routine, you can add as many steps as your child will enjoy. Make sure to show him how to do every single step before letting him work on his own; do it slowly so he can absorb your movements and repeat them.
Avoid limiting food preparation activities to pretend play, with wooden or plastic food. If we want our children to acquire real skills and independence, we need to expose them to real experiences.
Trust your child and his development. For some adults, it might seem unrealistic that a toddler can manipulate rounded knives, peelers, or spiralizers without any help, but we must believe in the potential our children have. Their fingers might look small, but the strength in those muscles is enormous and is still developing. We must allow them to practice and make use of their fine motor skills.
Healthy Food: Since we are offering our children their first experiences with food, we must aim to do it healthily. When you know your little one will be busy in the kitchen preparing some snacks, salads, or sandwiches, you want to make sure it is healthy with no chemicals and beneficial for him. His relationship with food will be constructed during his first three years of life, so this is more than just preparing a snack, is it an opportunity to prevent obesity and other food-related problems in the future.
Some Food Prep Ideas:
- Peeling: cucumbers, carrots, celery, zucchini, beets
- Pouring: water, milk, juice
- Water activities: Fruit water like lemonade or teas with herbs
- Spreading: hummus, cheese, nut butters, sunflower butter, avocado,
- Fingers: peeling bananas, clementines, opening pistachios, washing fruit or veggies
- Desserts: baked apples with cinnamon, fruit popsicles, fruit salads
- Slicing: Start with soft items like bananas, avocado, mango
A Suggestion of Kitchen Tools:
- Apple Slicers
- Spiralizers
- Cherry Pitter
- Lime squeezer
- Wavy Chopper
- Spreading Knife
- A metal juicer with Arm to Pull
- Rounded Chef Knife (Child-size)
- Whisk (Child-size)
- Pitcher (Child-size)
- Measuring Cups and Spoons
- Small Cutting Boards
- Kitchen Helper Tower
- Easy to open containers to store food/snacks
- Cleaning Tools (Child-size sponge, hand brush, dustpan, towel)
Item of the Month
Wooden Montessori Standing Tower by Kidzwerks
It is a kitchen step stool that lets toddlers help in the kitchen. Your toddler can use it to prepare snacks, wash dishes, clean the kitchen, etc. It is a beautiful addition to your home environment that will allow your toddler to do many things independently.
Link to buy it at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Kidzwerks-Child-Standing-Tower-Adjustable/dp/B07BMN5YDS/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=KidzWerks+Child+Standing+Tower+Adjustable&qid=1594823311&sr=8-5
Book of the Month
The Tickle Fingers Toddler Cookbook: Hands-on Fun in the Kitchen for 1 to 4s by Annabel Woolmer
In this book, you will find many recipes that are healthy, simple, and fun for your toddler to make, and most of them require minimal help from adults. It has many pictures that will guide you and your toddler through each recipe. Be ready to do some peeling, squishing, sorting, mixing, cutting, and pouring.
Link to buy it at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Tickle-Fingers-Toddler-Cookbook-Hands/dp/1785040561/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=The+Tickle+Fingers+Toddler+Cookbook%3A&qid=1594823604&sr=8-3
Have a little extra time?
Have a look at this article that explores ten children´s kitchen and chef’s knives. It will give you enough information to choose the one that will better serve your child at this point in his development.
Link to article:
