My son has always been a big helper in the kitchen. He is turning out to be quite the farm-to-table boy. He often picks fresh vegetables and herbs from our edible garden and brings them in the house, then requesting that we make soup with them. Getting him to eat that soup is another story all together. But baking, now that might just be both our favorites. And Ivy, only a year old, is getting in on the action.
We have a lot of rules in the kitchen. It has to be a safe place, and I often find myself sounding harsh when it comes to safe food handling and safe tool handling. It’s important that children understand the power behind a knife, fire, and germs or bacteria.
One thing we’ve adopted is an app. Cookie Doodle for your iPhone is a fun and creative game in which you can learn the steps for making and decorating cookies. You choose your dough, roll it out, choose a cutter, make shapes, bake and decorate your cookies. You even get to “eat” them! Miles loves to play this game, choosing different cookie combinations each time.
I like to think it helps him get the steps down so when we’re doing the real thing he can take the lead a little. When we bake together, we do math, as in fractions in measuring; science, watching the baking soda foam up in the hot sugar/molasses mixture; spacial relations, trying to get the most out of our cutters and the dough before having to re-roll; and art with the decorating of the cookies.
I used to be a little control freakish when it came to the decorating, but now I give him the icing spatula, sprinkles and decorator icing bag and let him go to town. His cookies are lovely and often come out more festive than mine.
This year Ivy joined him on the kitchen stool (which makes me so nervous!) so Miles took even more of a lead while I was on safety patrol. I love the memories — and science! — they are making together in the kitchen.
Sketch and photo by Wendy Kwasny, 2011.
About Wendy Kwasny, Contributing Blogger
Wendy Kwasny is a mom to a boy and a girl under 5 years old, a fine artist with 15+ years experience, and an advocate of attachment parenting, hands on learning, equality for all, arts and sciences in schools, organic gardening, and free play. Follow Wendy on Twitter @bendystar.
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