How to Teach Children to Bake

Every kid loves cookies and teaching children to bake is a great opportunity to spend quality time with your children. While they thrill at covering the kitchen in flour, you will enjoy watching your children learn about fractions, temperature, time management and responsibility. So grab an apron, turn off the video games and teach your children to bake their favorite cookies.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Easy cookie recipe
• Ingredients listed on recipe
• Aprons and decorating materials (optional)
• Bowls
• Measuring cups and spoons
• Cookie sheets
• Oven mitt or potholder

1. Make baking fun. Buy matching aprons, or better yet buy plain white aprons and let the children decorate their own.

2. Keep it simple. Give the children an opportunity to be successful. Have them start with a simple recipe and master it before moving on to more complicated directions.

3. Ask your child to read the recipe out loud. This will help him learn new words and terms and will also give you an excellent idea of your child's reading abilities.

4. Assemble all the necessary equipment. Ask your child to get out the bowls, cookie sheets, measuring utensils and ingredients that are within his reach to help him learn organizational skills.

5. Help your child learn fractions by allowing her to measure ingredients like ½ tsp. vanilla or 1/3 cup chopped nuts. Let your child measure both liquid and dry ingredients using the appropriate measuring cup.

6. Spoon the flour into the measuring cup and sweep the excess off with a straight edge to achieve an accurate measurement. Show your child the difference in the amount of flour in the cup when you spoon it in versus dipping the cup directly into the flour.

7. Show your child how to set the oven temperature and let her be responsible for keeping track of the time so the cookies don't burn.

8. Encourage your child's creativity in decorating or choosing the cookie cutter shape for the cookies.

9. Stress the importance of safety in the kitchen. Make sure all towels, pot holders and hair are kept away from the heat. Supervise your child's use of sharp utensils and hot pans.

Tips & Warnings

• When kids help you bake or cook, they learn about the foods they eat and have less time to sit in front of the television or play computer games.
• Baking together improves your child's social skills and teaches the value of teamwork.
• Teaching children to bake improves their manual dexterity and gives them a sense of accomplishment that is great for their self esteem.
• Always keep a fire extinguisher in the kitchen in case of emergency.
• Show your child that dipping the cup into the flour will put too much flour in the cup. The flour will be compressed resulting in dry cookies.