How to Make a Recipe Book for Kids
For the parent who complains, "My kid won't eat anything," those words don't really feel like an overstatement. It can be extremely difficult and worrisome having to deal with children at mealtime when nothing seems to appeal to their liking. Getting your child involved in the creation of a personalized cookbook may be one way of getting him to eat more with less drama and trauma on everyone's part. Although the child should be given free reign as to what recipes go into the recipe book, you can certainly steer her choices in a healthful direction. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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How to Make a Recipe Book for Kids
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Be accepting of all of the ideas that come out of this session. It is possible that something that you might never personally think of eating might be appealing and even nutritional.
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Brainstorm together by coming up with ideas for just one day of meals. List both your and your child's ideas. Talk about the positives and negatives for each idea. For example, your child might want to include fried chicken. You might bring up the fact that although fried chicken is a good protein food, it's also pretty heavy on fat and grease. Suggest compromises wherever possible; in this case, for example, you might look for a recipe for oven baked chicken nuggets as an acceptable substitute.
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Acquaint your child with the Food Pyramid as set out by the USDA. Ask your child to make sure that there are plenty of recipes for each part of the pyramid. Have fun thinking of foods that could be used for the fruits and vegetable category.
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Find recipes by searching through cookbooks or the Internet. Depending on the child's skill level, you might assign such jobs as typing up recipes, copying the recipes, writing a few recipes out by hand, or cutting and pasting recipes from on-line sources. Young children may also enjoy coming up with some clever names for the recipes or illustrating the pages in the cookbook.
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Help your child organize the ideas you have brainstormed together. Perhaps the recipe book will list one day's menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. Or perhaps the book will have categories such as main dishes, salads, and desserts.
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Provide cardstock for a cover. Let the child come up with a name for the cookbook ("Lindsey's Recipes" or "Great Ideas for Great Meals," for example). Then ask the child to design and decorate the cover.
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Take the finished book to a copy shop and have it bound. Spiral bindings are not expensive and will make the book easy to use.
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Tips & Warnings
Using cookbooks with full-color photographs can help interest a child in new foods.
Don't squelch about your child's interest by questioning ideas about putting entrees and side dishes together that normally are not served together. The object of this project is to get your child to eat.
