Is the kitchen your escape? If you love cooking and that’s often your alone time, you may be reluctant to invite your kids into the kitchen.
But if you’ve followed me for long, you may have been convinced that teaching kids to cook is an important way to grow connection, confidence, and creativity in your family. Not to mention that cooking is a valuable life skill your kids need to learn.
RELATED: It goes beyond learning how to cook! Social and emotional skills are taught in the kitchen as well!
Ready for some encouragement from a mom who’s been there?
Teaching Kids to Cook…When You Want to be Alone in the Kitchen
Meet Candis, homeschooling mom, and Kids Cook Real Food™ recommender.
When I cook, I like it to be my quiet creative time – kids go outside and be with Daddy and I listen to a podcast and just work. But I know that it’s important for them to be in – so I need to choose between taking care of myself or the greater good of my family! 😉 My nature is to send them away and work by myself.
Candis is a Charlotte Mason method homeschooler and has been a long-time Kitchen Stewardship reader. When she saw our free knife skills preview video she was interested!
She usually uses free homeschool curriculum and guides other than math, so it was rare for her to spend money on a class for her kids, but she wanted something for home ec that was all put together so that she could just open it up and press play.
The quality of the knife skills video and seeing how it was laid out made her realize this kid’s cooking course was worth investing in.
Candis hoped that learning to cook would inspire her kids to be more helpful around the house and feel a sense of contribution and belonging in their family after a friend shared some research showing that kids who are involved in helping around the house have better success in life.
RELATED: Capitalize on young kids’ intrinsic motivation to be helpful by teaching them to cook young.
Building Confidence Through Teaching Kids to Cook
Candis has been learning some tips right along with her kids!
Prior to using KCRF, she’d say “Tuesday is cooking day” – and the girls would say, “cooking day, yay!” and she was never ready.
Kids don’t need plastic knives. They need real skills.
Teach safe technique, focus, and confidence in the all-time fav lesson from our kids cooking class! (ages 2-12)
With our class, the kids can just jump into a video, while she pulls out the food they’ll need to practice. And even if she isn’t prepared with food on hand, they can still watch the video and learn the skill and practice it another day.
Just practicing flipping with a spatula is a helpful experience that leads to better cooking skills. That can be done on the side without needing to cook that day at all.
Some highlights of the Kids Cook Real Food™ cooking course for Candis and her family:
- I bought the VIP option because I didn’t want to be rushed and do it at my own pace. I look forward to doing it w/ 2yo now.
- I like that lessons are specific skills and we weren’t always preparing a meal right then. Single pieces are really manageable in a 15-20 min. time frame and we can bring them out later for dinner, while the kids practiced the skill during “cooking skills time” instead of always at dinner time.
- I love the language, teaching methods, and ways to help kids remember. I use the little memory phrases as little reminders and they use them with each other too!
Independent Cooking Classes for Older Kids
Your kids are more capable in the kitchen than you think! If your kids are ages 8+ we can teach them to cook for you with Kids Cook Solo, no adults needed!
Kids Cook Real Food™: Mom and Kid-Approved Cooking Course
Candis has now recommended Kids Cook Real Food™ often to friends.
She sees growth with maturity in her kids as they grow older. The kids have gained confidence and independence.
The family has just decided that the 10-year-old will do Thursday night’s dinner every week starting in the fall. She’s still nervous about the stove but very excited too!
They haven’t delved into the nutritional aspect in written materials, but that’s something she wants to do more. Candis wants her kids to learn about nutrition so they can take it upon themselves to eat healthily as they grow into adulthood.
Are you ready to teach your kids life skills and see them gain confidence in the kitchen just like Candis did?
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