Archive for the ‘Kids Cooking Activities’ Category

I was looking around my kitchen today and thinking about the ways we use it that don’t include cooking and yet are great learning experiences.

One thing we’ve done is to go around and count the cabinet knobs, by twos, threes, or fives.  If you don’t have knobs, your kids can count the cabinet doors and drawers.  They can also practice counting in Spanish.

We have 12 inch tiles on our kitchen floor.  It’s fun to take construction paper and cut the  colored paper up into different sized blocks.  For instance, blue paper becomes 6 inch blocks, green is cut into 3 inch blocks, and red is 1 1/2 inch squares.  We even cut various-sized orange and yellow triangles too. The kids tape these down on the kitchen floor inside the tile(s) so they’re all touching and fit in nicely.  Eventually we end up with a floor quilt!

Have you ever bought one of those multi-bean soup bags?  The beans are perfect for making repetitive patterns.  1 brown, 2 green, 3 red, 1 black, and again… 1 brown, 2 green, 3 red, 1 black.  Let your kids come up with their own patterns or try to complete each other’s patterns.

I’ll list some more ideas in a later post.  Meanwhile, add your own here in the comment section!  Just click on the green comment area above by the title of this post.

I’m posting 2 fun kids cooking activities for you today.  The first one we’ve done as part of a Halloween party where our guests were families, not just kids.  The second is perfect for a boring, rainy, inside day.

1.  Make your favorite sugar cookies or cut-out cookie recipe, but before you bake them you should take a straw and punch out a hole at the top of each cookie.  After they’re baked and cool, tie a 2 foot long piece of string or yarn to each one.

At party time pair off the guests, preferably 1 adult with 1 child.  The adult gets down on their knees with their hands behind their backs.  The child stands before them (on a chair if necessary) dangling the cookie on the string.  The adult has to try to eat it without using her hands, which is not easy because it swings around.  You want to keep it safe so make sure the guests know this is not a race and that they should tip their head back down normally while chewing.  It’s pretty hilarious and you should take pictures and/or video shots.

2.  Decoration imagination is the name of this activity and cupcakes are the young decorator’s target.  Challenge your kids to decorate the cupcakes like however you tell them to.  A bee?  A cat?  A beachball?  A flower?  A quilt top?  Help them look through your pantry for decorations they can use.  You’ll be surprised with how creative they can be!

Send me any pictures of your children doing these kids activities and I’ll post them here!