Age Appropriate Activities in the Kitchen

In this article, I provide a guide to age appropriate activities in the kitchen. It is important that you keep activities age appropriate so that children are not doing things that they will not be successful at. This will obviously have a negative outcome. Of course challenging your child is also important but because there are so many dangers and potential hazards in the kitchen, it is vital that we keep all activities in the kitchen age appropriate.

Use your common sense and if you think your child has mastered all of the activities that would be considered suitable for their age group and they are close to the next age group, try something that is a little more advanced.

Age Appropriate Cooking Activities for Children:

Children Under 7 Years Old

Stirring by Hand, Measuring Some Ingredients, Pouring Some Ingredients, Husking Corn, Helping plan meals, Take part in discussions about the activity, Assist with storing leftovers, Assist with simple clean up duties such as bringing foods and items back to an adult for put away, Tearing lettuce into pieces, Smashing crackers or cookies in a zip lock for recipes

Children 8-10 years old

Of course they can take part in all activities mentioned above plus:

Grating Cheese, Stirring food in a pan/pot on the stove while being supervised, Using an electric mixer with supervision, Opening cans, Assisting with reading a recipe, Cracking eggs, Measuring ingredients, Helping collect items and ingredients that are stored higher

Children 10 years old and up

All activities mentioned above plus:

Dredge and bread items such as strips of chicken to be baked or fried, Begin to learn how to cut/chop fruits and vegetables, start by having them use plastic or butter knives while teaching them the proper way to hold the knife and cut (This activity must be closely supervised), Prepare scrambled eggs from start to finish, Make toast

Really at this age they can begin doing most of what adults do in the kitchen. Just use your common sense. If your child is over the age of ten and has not been involved in cooking activities before, keep it simple at first.

Sometimes the biggest obstacle standing in the way of us cooking with our kids is that we may not know what types of tasks to give them or we think that there is nothing for them to do. So I hope that this guide will help you realize that a kitchen is a tremendous place to explore together!

Look for my final article in this series about cooking with children which will include some terrific recipes!