Holidays in the Kitchen with Your Children
It’s the most wonderful time of the year to bake sweet treats and work on everyday activities in the kitchen. There are lots of great ways to have your children help out in the kitchen while working on sensory integration, fine motor skills, problem solving, strengthening, and even coordination skills. Children of all ages can help out in the kitchen and, in fact, they should! Take a look at some tips below:
Take a moment to look through some recipes with your child and pick one together that you want to make. You could go to the store together, find the ingredients, and measure each one step by step. This is a great way to work on problem solving, following directions, and self-help skills. If you want to sneak a little handwriting in, you could even have your child write a shopping list of the needed ingredients.
Have the little ones help you carry in some of the groceries. They will work on increasing strength, engaging in a little heavy work to calm those bodies, and learning how to move their body in space.
Encourage each child to mix those ingredients together with a whisk or a spoon. This will allow each child to build strength, work on coordinating two hands together (one to hold the bowl and one to hold the utensil), and give those hands some great heavy work.
Find those rolling pins and cookie cutters and have your child touch and roll out the dough. This is a great way to work on strength, coordination, and participate in a little sensory play to learn about new textures.
Squeeze frosting and add sprinkles to the cookie designs together. By squeezing icing and opening the sprinkles container, each child builds strength and coordination skills in the small muscles of the hand that are needed to open packages and even manipulate buttons on their clothes.
Set a timer together and take a moment to review safety tips and tricks in the kitchen. It is so important to teach kids in the moment about safety tips such as what to do when the oven is hot or how to ask for help.
Clean-up time is the best part, after eating the cookies of course. By having your child help with scrubbing the dishes with a sponge, loading the dishwasher, or drying the wet dishes, your child is learning everyday tasks that can be used throughout life. Clean-up time works on strength, fine motor, coordination, and you guessed it, building independence skills.
The holidays are a great time to work together in the kitchen. Start making those memories and building foundational skills that your child can use for the rest of their life. Happy baking!
For any other questions, please feel free to reach out via email at alysha@collaborativecorner.org. A timely response will be provided within 24 hours.
Alysha Stoner, OTR/L
Occupational Therapist
alysha@collaborativecorner.org