#CookToConnect Challenge! Inspiration to get in the kitchen with your kids!

Welcome to our January Challenge, where your "New Year, new me" inspiration can impact your whole family! Cooking with your children helps them develop independence, creativity, and fills them with purpose. There are also numerous physical, mental, and emotional milestones that can be met through cooking. We're often utilizing fine motor skills, sequencing skills, problem solving skills, reading, and math... the list seems to grow as they develop more skills and take on new challenges. There's also evidence to suggest that children who are involved in meal preparations are more likely to favor vegetables, know the importance of a healthy diet, and these children are more likely to carry healthy diet choices into adulthood. This all makes sense, because the more skill you have in the kitchen, the better you can make healthy foods taste. If a pre-teen comes home from school and is responsible for grabbing themselves a snack, they're more likely to grab something packaged if they aren't sure what to put together from raw ingredients; but, if they have a few skills built up, they can feel empowered to make something a bit healthier.

Our goal with this challenge is to prove to you that you can have your children join you with meal prep and have it actually be helpful, not a hindrance! Oftentimes meal times are very stressful because everyone is hungry and cranky, and for small children that means they are very needy! It can be hard to make anything for dinner when you're being summoned by sweet babes that only want to play with their mom or dad. I propose to you to let them join you-- you will get dinner done, help instill cooking skills, work on educational milestones, and connect with your child!

Week 1 Recipe Prompts: Eggs

Week 2 Recipe Prompts: Avocado

Week 3 Recipe Prompts: Banana

Week 4 Recipe Prompts: Greens

Where Do I Start?

Photo from The Kavanaugh Report Blog, from left to right is a great progression to utilize when teaching kid's knife skills. Starting with a spreading knife for small toddlers ages 1-2, and working up as they master each tool.

We will give you a new recipe prompt each week, think of this as a starting off point! You can do our recipe prompts each week, starting small on a single focus each week, or you can use it as inspiration to involve your child in meal prep as much as you're able! We will update this blog post each week with the file that includes the recipe prompts. You'll also be able to check out our instagrams for more information and tips! Follow me @paleoandparenting and Hannah @pinotandplaydates if you'd like some real life action of us cooking with our kids and other tips! Remember, the age recommendations are just a base point of information. Follow your individual child, they may be ready for something much beyond the ages I've listed, or they might be taking their time mastering skills before moving on.

Norah peeling her hard boiled egg and placing the shells in her garbage bowl

Some other basic kitchen tricks or areas that kids often like to help beyond the recipe prompts:

• If I'm making something a bit more complex, or I don't have a lot of patience that day, I often set my kids up with materials that I know they can handle without close supervision. My 4 and 2.5 year old kids do very well with a bowl of fruit or veggies each, and a few cutting tools with a cutting board. I sometimes have them chop veggies for our dinner, say a curry or soup; and, other times I let them cut their own side veggies or fruits for their dinner plates.

• Sink work can be fun for them and helpful for you! Set them up with some produce to wash and scrub in the sink, and a bowl to hold the clean produce.

• Set them up with a vegetable peeler and some carrots! The peeling process is very purposeful work for them, it takes a lot of focus, and it is a skill they tend to really want to work at.

• Let them sprinkle salt, pepper, spices on things. I like to pre-measure the maximum amount I would want in the dish and then give that to the child, as they will likely dump all of it on the food!

• Make sure to have a salad spinner! Not only does it help with groceries, as it's usually much cheaper to buy greens that aren't pre-packaged, but children LOVE spinning the salad spinner! It often keeps my kids busy for a whole dinner cooking session. When they finish, have them tear the cleaned and dried lettuce into a salad bowl. More advanced kids can mix a salad at this point!

• Little ones, ages 1-2, gain confidence, skill, and fine motor strength from peeling their own shells off or peels off. Think: peeling a clementine orange, peeling a hardboiled egg, peeling a banana etc. Offer them a small bowl on the side to put their peels into to help them clean as they go!

• Have them fill up water jugs for the dinner table.

• Have them set the table.

• Have them help with unloading the dishwasher.

Week 1 Recipe Prompts: Eggs

Week 2 Recipe Prompts:

Week 3 Recipe Prompts:

Week 4 Recipe Prompts:

William and Norah sprinkling chia seeds on the fruit they chopped to go with their breakfasts

What about the Mess?

Kids in the kitchen can get messy. There's just no way to sugarcoat that fact! But, before you get anxious thinking about all that work, try to remember that mess is how we all learn. It's how your kids learned to eat, and use a spoon or a cup-- it's also how they'll learn some kitchen skills! Sometimes kids need the feedback of something breaking to learn that it is fragile, or something spilling to learn that it's very messy and hard to clean. We often give our kids plastic plates or cups to avoid them getting broken, but sometimes this creates a disconnect for them. They don't learn to be careful with their dishes, because they've never had to be, nothing happens when they drop them! Once they get that loud reaction of a glass plate dropping and breaking they learn that glass is fragile. Also, it is how we're going to teach them some household responsibility as well, because we can enroll them in helping with clean up!

Having a large beach towel around to help clean up any spilled water from veggie washing is a fun task. My kids started out in a Toddler Montessori class room, where they had a big purple beach towel for big water spills. They sometimes still ask for, "a big purple towel" when there's a bunch of water to clean up! A simple, "Oh dear, it looks like there's water all over the floor! Let's clean it up with the big towel!" is usually all that needs to be said to get them willing to help! If they are truly damaging the environment or the materials in the kitchen, then you can redirect them towards another task, or you can let them know that since they aren't being respectful to the environment (the kitchen) or their materials (the knives, or food) then that will be enough for the day and we can try again another day.

Another area they can help clean is with sweeping. There are all sorts of hand held brooms with dustpans, and smaller stand-up broom and dust pan sets that are good for small hands. I highly recommend getting one of these for your home! It takes a while, but they can get quite efficient with it! Now my kids help themselves to the big broom when they see something they need to sweep up! However, for a very long time you will be doing the majority of the sweeping while they push crumbs around with their brooms learning the task.

You can also have a smaller spray bottle filled with a very mild type of cleaner (think safe things like vinegar diluted with water etc.) and your child can spray and wipe surfaces. They love spray bottles, so get ready for a toddler style deep clean!

William using a large crinkle cutter to slice his bananas

Norah using a banana cutter to slice her bananas. In her Halloween costume, still!

I don't want to buy more stuff!

I totally get this. It's right after Christmas... who wants more things right now?! Good thing is: you probably don't need to buy anything new! You probably have everything you need in your kitchen, and you can rig existing things to work better for your children. If you do want to buy some new gadgets, I made an amazon list to inspire you with everything we use. I do not receive commission, this is technically a wish list on amazon. But I removed the recipient column and there's no address, so it should function as an inspiration list for you to start off with. You can access the list by clicking here: #CookToConnect idea list

Additionally, don't be intimidated by secondhand stores like Goodwill. They generally have a lot of stuff in the kitchen section that can be fun or novel for kids in the kitchen, because usually the novel stuff is the first things people want to donate when they're decluttering! I shared in my insta stories that I scored an apple slicer/corer and a pitcher/citrus juicer combo the other day at Goodwill. I never found a reason to justify buying these things at full price, but scoring them secondhand was a fun new way for my kiddos to slice their apples 100% on their own!

Things we use regularly: our helper ladders (a dining chair would work perfectly fine), crinkle cutters (a fun option for knife skill progression), kids nylon knives for cutting (you probably want to start chopping with something like this as they work on skills), spreading knives (a good starting off point for knives, you can get small butter spreaders but a normal butter knife could work in a pinch!), a glass pitcher measuring cup (great for egg cracking and measuring liquids), measuring cups and spoons, cutting boards, a whisk (an old fashioned hand crank whisk is awesome for kids!), smaller spatulas, potato mashers (for potatoes or avocado), a citrus juicer (any one would work, but the kind that you press into a bowl is easier for small hands), and novelty fruit cutters (like strawberry slicers, cherry pitters, grape slicers, banana cutter, or an apple corer/slicer). Most of these things you already have, and just because it's easier for the child to have a smaller tool doesn't mean it's not possible for them to use an adult size. Let them try! Teach them what to do and see what happens. My kids use a mixture of adult sized stuff and kid sized stuff. Check out my amazon list even as inspiration for what tools you can use with your kids, even if you already own them!

I'm afraid they'll hurt themselves!

This is scary! I received a lot of side eye when I posted a video of my 2 year old son using his knives to chop fruit. But, you can trust your child with real materials. This is a Montessori philosophy, so it is "alternative education," but it makes a difference. Of course, you want to teach the child the right way and allow their skills to develop the right way before you thrust a true chef's knife on them, but children are more than capable of practicing responsibility and impulse control. They want to help, and they want to use the tools they see you using. Also, the watered down version of things often don't work as well and your children will notice that. For example, we never used those plastic scissors for our kids to learn cutting paper. We gave them the metal blade ones right away, because it is frustrating when you're doing everything right but your paper won't cut! It is easy to get discouraged when your materials are limiting you. The same applies if you give them a dull, plastic knife and expect them to enjoy trying to cut their berries or orange slices. They can tell it's lighter and they notice it doesn't chop the same way yours does. It just won't work the same! I have seen some sharpened wood cutters out there, but I'm skeptical and consider them a watered down knife. I think if your child is ready for that, then they'd likely do just find with a handled crinkle cutter or a nylon knife.

Enjoy time with your Child-- This is the stuff they remember!

Working in the kitchen with my parents and grandparents are some of my fondest memories! I think it's easy to think of cooking with kids in any real way of an "older kid" activity, but the sky is the limit here. There are some Montessori families on the internet who post videos of their 3- year olds making scrambled eggs from beginning to end all by themselves. As always, follow the lead of your child no need to push tremendous kitchen goals on them, but I think you'll be surprised at what they are capable of if you give them the space to do so!

I can't wait to see what you all get up to with your kids! Please post your photos and tag us so we can see! I'd love to answer any questions that might pop up, just leave a comment here or on my instagram posts! Have fun!