Children as young as two can learn to cook – here’s how

From the age of two years, a child could be rolling mixtures such as cookie dough into balls, although the shape and size may vary and it may be more of a tactile experience in the beginning. They could also help with washing vegetables, an opportunity to expose them to different vegetables and also to teach them the importance of removing dirt from food.

From the age of three – depending on the child – a child should have the capacity to use a knife to perform simple tasks under parental supervision. We suggest starting with a butter knife or one made of plastic and chopping something soft like a banana. It’s all about practising the skills and about building confidence – for both the child and the adult.

Kitchen tasks like these could help children develop their motor skills. Fine motor skills are the coordination and movement of the small muscles in the fingers and hands, while gross motor skills are are the coordination and movement of the larger muscles in the limbs, such as in the arms.

Stirring and mixing require fine motor skills such as a radial palmar grasp – holding an object to the palm with the fingers and thumb. They also involve gross motor skills, such as arm movement and strength. Peeling an orange or skewering chopped pieces of vegetable requires a dynamic quadrupod or tripod grip: fine motor movements using the thumb and two or three fingers, similar to the way one holds a pencil.

The development of motor skills in early life has been shown to predict academic achievement in reading and maths. But research conducted in Ireland in 2015 has suggested that children may not be developing fine motor skills at the expected normal rate. This may be due to an increased use of technology among children, as opposed to traditional activities such as playing with blocks or board games. Cooking could be used as a method to help this development.

Trying all these different skills with children is likely to create a mess in the beginning. But it also provides an opportunity for play and learning – as well as experimenting with new foods and recipes and building good food habits. Including children in cooking tasks will give them invaluable life skills that will enable them to make positive healthy food choices in adulthood.

Fiona Lavelle is a Research Fellow in the Institute for Global Food Security, Queen’s University Belfast, and Moira Dean is a Professor in Consumer Psychology and Food Security, Queen’s University Belfast.

This article first appeared on The Conversation, and is republished here under the terms of the Creative Commons licence. You can read the original.

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