Getting kids involved in the kitchen early in life has many benefits. Not only can they learn about food and the different ways it can fit together, but they can also learn about nutrition, and even science. Baking is one of the activities for kids also makes them much more likely to eat it when it makes it to the dinner table!
Baking Activities for Kids
Kids can get involved in making anything, but it’s easiest to start out with simpler recipes, especially when baking. There are some easy ways to get kids involved in baking, no matter their age or skill level. Eventually, they’ll be able to make YOU chocolate chip cookies!
To get your kids involved in baking, start out with some of these kid-friendly baking ideas. Baking will quickly become one of your favorite activities for kids when you see how much they love it!
Cookies
Whether you’re making cut-outs or drop cookies, kids can crack eggs, mix dough with their hands, and help with the measuring and dumping together of the ingredients. It’s especially easy for them to help with drop cookies if you have a cookie scoop, but hands work too! Kids love to get messy.
Cut-out cookies aren’t as easy for little ones to help with, but they can push down cookie cutters and help with decorating! Decorating cut-outs is a great time for a child’s imagination to run wild. Help them choose and make frosting colors and provide sprinkles, candies, marshmallows, and any other toppings you can think of. Just limit it to a certain number of toppings per cookie, so that they don’t get overloaded with sugar! This also works for cupcakes.
Bread
While bread may not be the easiest thing for smaller children to help with, slightly older kids can help measure, mix, and knead. It’s also a great teaching opportunity to explain the chemical reaction that causes the bread to rise. If you make a versatile dough, however, even young kids can get involved in shaping it! Let them create an animal, face, monster, or whatever they want. Just try to keep it mainly the same thickness, so that it bakes evenly. You can even provide them with raisins and nuts to make patterns or faces on it.
Baked Oatmeal
Since there are many baked oatmeal recipes that can be made the night before, kids don’t have to get up early to help with breakfast. Let your child pick what kinds of fruits, nuts, or other mix-ins to add. Help him or her measure out the correct amounts of milk and sugar or honey, and help mix it all together. This is a great way to get kids excited about eating breakfast! Even the picky ones.
Baked Fruit Desserts
Looking for a healthier dessert option for baking with kids? Baking fruit is not only easy, but can be much less detrimental to the diet than other desserts. For example, simply coring an apple and stuffing it with (a little) butter, brown sugar, nuts, and raisins makes for an excellent dessert. You can even add oats and flour to the mixture to create that sort of apple pie crust taste, without all the added butter. Kids will love mixing together the stuffing and stuffing the apples with it, and they’ll be excited about eating a dessert that’s healthier! There are also recipes for baking other fruits, such as pears and bananas.
See all the Activities for Kids on this site!