Guest Post by Uncle Ben’s
Working in the kitchen is something most children enjoy just as much as they enjoy eating the finished product. They love the whole process of adding ingredients together, creating something unique and seeing how it turns out.
Because cooking is so much fun, children don’t even realize just how much they are learning. When families cook together, kids learn an essential life skill as important as reading and writing. Plus, cooking at a young age leads to healthier meal choices that can last a lifetime. That was one of the reasons we started our Ben’s Beginners™ Cooking Contest in 2012 – to encourage families to get together in the kitchen. This year, we’re offering five Grand Prizes of $15,000 for the family and a $30,000 cafeteria makeover for the child’s school!
We’ve always believed in the power of bringing families together and now we are providing ways to do so through our interactive website: beginners.unclebens.com. It has tips on ways to improve confidence in the kitchen as well as family-friendly recipes to enjoy. Plus, it is also where families can enter to win through Ben’s Beginners™.
As parents, we can appreciate the valuable skills gained in the kitchen, such as reading recipes, measuring ingredients and following directions. It’s great that something that is so enjoyable can reinforce lessons in science, language, math and creativity.
It’s not just this important lifelong skill that cooking can provide. When kids cook, these other critical skills are reinforced:
Measurements, Math and Time
Recipes are filled with fractions, timing, weights and measurements. And the casual process of following a recipe and letting kids measure out ingredients such as a half-cup of milk or two eggs helps to promote mathematical thinking and basic math.
Time can be a challenging concept for little ones to grasp, but each time they see you setting a timer and waiting for it to alert you to when a dish is done, they will begin to form an understanding of something very abstract.
Science
Cooking is all about reactions that happen when ingredients come together in a delicious way. What happens if you forget to add baking powder to your banana bread? Why do you add salt to cookie dough? Though children may not be ready to comprehend the complexity behind the chemical reactions, preparing and cooking food is a great time for them to ask questions – and parents to ask their kids questions – and have everyone test out the results.
Creativity
As many adults know, cooking is as much an art as it is a science. Cooking allows us to experiment and use our creativity. The process of tasting and adding new ingredients or spices can be exciting as kids learn to think about the creativity that goes into a recipe.
Reading
Recipes can be fun to read and they teach kids new words. Reading recipes aloud is another opportunity for your child to improve their vocabulary. It gives them a chance to learn new words, and rather than a story, instructions can put words together indifferent ways.
With ways to get families into the kitchen and help provide skills for children to learn to cook – like stirring, measuring, pouring, peeling and chopping – the new beginners.unclebens.com has everything you need to make a great family meal. Make sure to check it out and take a photo of your family cooking together – it could just make you our next Ben’s Beginners™ winners!
