Teach Your Children to Cook

Mom Takes Nap Kids Cook Dinner! Wouldn't that be a lovely headline? Mom you need a break and one is right at your fingertips! It start with teaching your children to cook!

Years ago when I was living at home and going to college to help my mom out I would cook dinner when I got home from school. Since I got home before she got home from work I liked to think my small attempt at gastronomy helped to ease her long days.

At the time I used what I knew about cooking. And thanks to my mother that was plenty. But there was still plenty of skills in the kitchen that I could have learned at the time.

Let me take you back 20 or 30 er ahem odd years ago when I received an Easy Bake oven for my birthday. I was ecstatic! I had wanted to bake so bad. That oven lasted about as long as the mixes it came with and then I turned to the big real oven in the kitchen!

I started by baking cupcakes and cakes. I tried my hand at decorating and my best friend and I even had a thriving summer business selling cupcakes to passing joggers (true story). We were young. We didn't realize we were sabotaging their efforts.

It is many, many years later and now my own daughter wants to cook. But thanks to all of these great cooking shows her aspirations are quite a bit higher than mine. I've been attempting to teach her to cook in spurts and bits but wouldn't a done for you kid's cooking curriculum be nice? And as much as I love things of vintage age a nice modern one with video helps would just fit the bill.

Teach Kids to Cook

Well (yaay) there is one. A curriculum for teaching your child to cook.

For the last few months we've been test driving the Kids Cook Real Food Cooking eCourse

I'm already a great fan of the Kitchen Stewardship ebooks so I was pretty sure I would enjoy this new curriculum.

The Kids Cook Real Food eCourse has been so good!  The videos are engaging and the details are complete. A lot of work went into the making of this and it shows.

Katie has three levels in each class depending on where your child is at. Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.

My daughter chose to start with the Beginning classes. At first I thought she should start with Intermediate but these classes are really detailed and complete. I'm sure that I've missed something along the way in my own teaching so starting with the Beginner course means that hopefully those gaps will be closed. This was actually my daughter's thinking when she wanted to start with Beginner.

The videos are short on time but not content. Katie packs a lot of details into each lesson and your child will come away with safety tips, snack ideas, a cooking skill and a smile.

The Kids Cook Real Food Cooking eCourse includes the following

• over 30 basic cooking skills
• 8 classes with 5 videos each + additional intro video for adults
• 3 levels: beginners (age 2-5), intermediate (6+ with beginner proficiency), advanced (8+ with intermediate mastery)
• recipe eBooks written especially for children to follow
•  250+ pages of PDF material/lesson plans
• 24 “daily nugget” factoid cards
• printable flash card set with fun phrases to help kids remember techniques
•  There are additional “Foundations 101” videos and PDFs
• 12-month access
• VIP level includes lifetime access plus bonuses like an additional 4 video class, extension recipe eBook, 3-month membership to Super Healthy Kids meal plans, private Facebook group support, exclusive webinars and more

You can find out these details and answer those questions you have on the FAQs page.

It's a lot of stuff! And it's well done. I fully expect my child to be cooking dinner in a few months 🙂

Here’s a little list of what is covered in the course:

BEGINNER 

• Carrying glass dishes to serve
• Spreading
• Peeling vegetables
• Slicing with a dull knife
• Dull knife cross hatch pattern
• Measuring ingredients – spoons and cups
• Blending spice mixes
• Soaking dry beans
• Careful Pouring
• Making a salad
• Working with dough
• Peeling hard-boiled eggs

INTERMEDIATE 

• Setting the table
• Making homemade salad dressings
• Introduction to sharp knives
• Cracking eggs
• Mixing simple recipes independently
• Cooking rice
• Stovetop safety
• Flipping pancakes
• Rolling dough
• Browning ground beef

ADVANCED 

• Sautéing vegetables
• Using a small appliance (food processor taught)
• Sharp knife skills, levels 1-4 (straight vegetables, peppers, onions, melons, apples)
• Crushing garlic
• Making a white sauce/cheese sauce
• Oven safety
• Cooking eggs
• Steaming vegetables
• Cooking dry beans
• Washing the table

How are we coming along in the kitchen

My daughter has been very interested in healthy eating for many years. She grew up in a soy-free household with a mom who loves to cook so it's only natural. She reads labels, walked off with my copy of [easyazon_link identifier=”1583334009″ locale=”US” tag=”mommybabytool-20″]Prescription for Nutritional Healing[/easyazon_link] and eats at least 2 apples a day. An expensive habit that makes me thankful we live in an apple state.

She has always wanted to know how to cook but gets intimidated with sharp knives, flames from gas burners, and that big gaping hole known as the oven.

With the The Kids Cook Real Food Cooking eCourse Katie is taking her step by step, starting with knives,  peeling, and spreading and teaching her how to prepare food safely and correctly with confidence.

She is really enjoying these classes set up for just for kids. And has put printables and recipe book in her little binder.

I'm no chef but since I watch a lot of cooking shows I feel like I am, right? The skills Katie is showing my daughter are the same ones I see judges looking for in chefs on cooking shows. Knife skills, food prep kitchen safety. The Sweet Peanut is looking good 🙂

To do each class, since she has a bit of experience helping me out in the kitchen, I pretty much just set up her supplies and propped her Kindle on the counter.

I commence with my own cooking in another part of the kitchen and give her any help she needs.

The first 2 lessons we did were Spreading and Peeling (beginner) and Dull Knife Skills. The included PDFs are really important with each class because they pass along valuable information for you and your child.

In Spreading and Peeling my daughter practiced (and learned) correct methods for peeling carrots and cucumbers. Then she put together a small snack of ants on a log and buttered bread (spreading). While these are skills she already knows (she's 10) reinforcing some small snacks she can pull together for herself was key for her in this lesson.

In Dull Knife Skills which follows Spreading and Peeling we used the dinner knife and learned about a cool new to us cutting tool for making a plate of delicious snacks. This class covered cutting soft items such as cheeses, melons, and bananas. At the end the Sweet Peanut had her kind of plate with fruit and cheeses. Just enough to share with her dad.

Each lesson PDF is packed with more information.

Included is a “Daily Nugget” that gives an informative tip on why we want to eat something. How it can benefit our bodies. Remember Katie is about whole foods and healthy eating.

Although there is a short video to go with each class the included PDFs also go over the steps so you could be the presenter to your child for this lesson. There are lots of tips for parents and cute catch phrases for kids to remember when using this skill.

The PDF lesson also includes the all important factor of teaching your child to independence, or coaching them so that when they are in the kitchen they can do this skill from beginning to end. Teaching them to clean up after themselves and practice often to get it right.

There are solutions for challenges you may encounter with your child and also links to yummy recipes on Kitchen Stewardship that uses the new found skill. Finally there is a shopping list for the next week's lesson.

In addition to the professionally taped cooking videos for your kids there are some videos just for you mom and dad.

and that's not all…

What other people who've use the course have to say…

• “My kids (ages 8, 10) absolutely love it! It has even helped my picky eater want to try new foods. We have multiple food allergies in our home and try to cook only real food already, but I didn't know how to teach my kids the techniques. I am learning so much too!”
• “You laid everything out so well that we had a GREAT laid back experience at the stove with FIRE. Who would have thought?!?! SO THANKFUL for this.”
• “Since my daughter is helping with making the seasonings, she now doesn't hate ranch dressing and taco seasoning!!! woohoo! Its as though making it herself changes it.”
• “I loved the practice the boys got on those basic kitchen skills. They were both excited that they're on their way to being able to cook on their own. My 7-year-old was like, “Now I can follow any recipe and cook anything!’”
• “Actually, it was the best time I've had in the kitchen with my kids for a long time!”
• “As soon as I started [the adult video], I don't even know how the kids knew, but they were swarming like bees. They love this cooking class!”
• “I LOVE that this lesson enabled my daughter to make a dinner that the whole family enjoyed – the rice was amazingly delicious!”

So are you ready to Teach Your Kids to Cook Real Food?