Baking is not only a great way for families to spend time together, it can help kids learn valuable life skills, including:
- Reading: following step-by-step recipe instructions, looking up ingredients, reading food labels, and exploring new foods and cultures.
- Math: budgeting for ingredients, measuring, multiplying and dividing fractions, scaling recipes, and portioning servings.
- Science: chemical food reactions, such as liquids turning to solids, and things increasing in size or changing color.
- Problem solving: thinking through substitutions when ingredients aren’t available, combining food colors to make new colors, deciding who’s going to do what and when, and determining when something is done.
- Nutrition: picking or discussing healthy options, the value of organics ingredients, and encouraging tasting and trying a wider variety of foods.
- Hand/eye coordination and sensory awareness: rolling doughs, scooping cookies, decorating with with frosting, sprinkling nuts, and everything else that requires patience and dexterity.
- Artistic expression: use of color and texture, working to make foods appear palatable, and exploring food traditions or cultural events that relate to foods.
- Social skills: sharing, taking turns, being patient, speaking up, and asking questions.
Check out AlohaSpiritBakery.com for additional tips for baking with kids!
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