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Cook Your Way To
Quality Time With Your Kids

If your evening ritual is to come home and cook dinner while your kids sit mesmerized in front of the TV it is time to make a change. Spending quality time with your kids is a hard thing to make time for and often not done enough. Maximize your quality time with your kids by including them in your kitchen activities! Cooking is great way to get them involved. Having them help pull out the cookware or read off the recipe ingredients are just a few ways to get them involved, read on for more great ideas!

The first thing to do is get rid off all distractions, especially the TV. Depending on your children’s ages will depend on the extent they can help you. I will leave that up to you to decide based on your children’s abilities. They can read the recipe to you, find the ingredients, measure, mix, blend, wash, stir, set the table and more! Involving your kids will not only help you spend some time with them but kids who cook tend to be more open to trying different kinds of foods. They might even do a better job of cleaning their plate when they have given a hand in making the meal! Kids love being involved and feeling like they have accomplished something, so get your little chef cooking!

Get creative; make faces, shapes, and animals with the food anytime there is an opportunity. When baking, let them frost or top the cookies and cakes. Make mouse pancakes by adding ears to the top of the main pancake. Dollop two eyes and a mouth to the pan first, let it cook for thirty seconds and then pour the pancake over that. Flip it over and you will have a smiley face pancake!

Letting your kids help in the kitchen can definitely take some patience as your little chefs won’t measure and blend as fast as you might. If you are in a hurry invite them into the kitchen, discuss your days, tell them a funny story, or play word games.

A good one where they can get nice and silly is a spin off of “I packed my suitcase with…” Just a cooking orientated version! Try “I am baking a cake with…” It is easy, spontaneous and fun! You start and say “I am baking a cake with apples” or any food item that starts with an ‘a’. They then have to repeat your sentence and then add onto it with an ingredient starting with the letter ‘b’, then you would repeat what they say and add something with a letter ‘c’, and so on. So you could end up with something like “I am baking a cake with apples, bacon, carrots, doughnuts, eggplant and fried eggs”. Do this until someone forgets and you have to start over! This is a great game that can include more then just the two of you and is bound to involve many laughs.

It is time to get creative and involve them in your daily routines while making it fun for everyone! Your kids will benefit from the time they get to spend with you. You will benefit because who knows, maybe they will grow up to be a famous chef! Alright, you will benefit because you will spend countless hours laughing and chatting while playing word games and telling stories in the kitchen. Your child will become a less picky eater and it won’t be a battle every night to get them to eat their veggies! Can you imagine?

Whatever the dish may be, find a way to involve your kids. Enjoy the preparation and the meals together! If you are creative enough you might even find a way to enjoy the clean up together!

About the Author:
Lisa Burzdak is a cookware specialist for Cookware Essentials.co.uk, a part of CSN Stores. Lisa currently resides in Galway, Ireland where she writes for a number of cookware and recipe blogs and websites. She loves experimenting with food to find the perfect healthy snacks kids love!

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