Kids in the Kitchen

(37 Months)

One of our favorite things to do together is to cook in the kitchen.  We make something delicious almost every day together.  Even early in the morning, before my coffee finishes brewing they will ask to help make their French toast.  I love how interested they are in cooking.

We keep most of our regularly used kiddie recipes here.  In fact, if you scroll through the boards you'll see what we've worked on, and lots of ideas of what we want to try.  If you haven't made anything with the kids before Larabars are a perfect start.

We've made countless batches of homemade Larabars (see our previous posts here and here) to supplement the ones that we buy to keep for on-the-go snacks.  These are so simple to make (the kids can do the entire process- with adult supervision), and the kids love making them in the morning and then having them for an afternoon snack.  Little Miss likes mixing up the combination of nuts- mostly walnuts and almonds, sometimes cashews or pecans, and on rare occasions macadamia nuts.  I love that they are eating a healthy snack filled with dates, nuts, unsweetened dark cocoa powder and dark chocolate chips.

The other regularly baked item we make each week is muffins.  We love muffins- banana, pumpkin, peanut butter, sweet potato-apple, carrot, apricot, blueberry are our favorites.  Muffins are fun for kids to bake. They love pouring the dry and liquid ingredients, mixing with a giant spoon, cracking the eggs, and peeling and mashing the bananas.

In addition to all the fun they have when making muffins, it teaches following directions, helps develop fine motor skills, demonstrates cause and effect, practices counting, builds self confidence and introduces measurements.  More importantly, it builds warm memories and develops a love of home cooking.