Six life skills you never knew you could teach preschoolers by baking with them

Get your little chef on board with your baking plans this holiday season and explore the social values you can teach!

Preschool class in the kitchen !

“Gift of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas!” - Peg Bracken.

Ho ho ho! Its once again that time of the year when you feel fun and happiness in the crisp winter air. The time, when the town is painted red, green and white. It is finally Christmas, when the fresh pine smell fills the air as we get busy wrapping gifts for others and playing our part in giving back to the society that unconditionally gives us a lot.

It is also the time of the year when your preschoolers will be out of school for almost 3 weeks, eagerly adding to their wish list of gifts and making their best efforts to get into Santa’s good list and waiting for him on Christmas eve. Having been a preschool teacher since past 7 years, one thing I pray never happens is that a preschooler feels BORED. I bet all the moms just know that feeling and absolutely no words can describe that! So what can you do to keep those young minds active and engaged so that you can get on with your never ending Christmas to-do list?

One thing that I absolutely LOVE to do with my preschool kids this time of the year is bake cookies with them! It is a Christmas tradition in many households where parents and children get together to bake and decorate Christmas cookies, but did you know how many important life skills can be taught to kids through baking?

Decision making

As a teacher, I always allow my preschoolers to take the lead during our baking sessions. That is of course, after we recap and set the basic safety rules. I allow them to decide their roles during the process. Someone hones the role of being the stirrer, someone is in charge of sprinkling the chocolate chips and someone is measuring the perfect quantity of flour and butter (with assistance as appropriate). Through baking I facilitate an engaging learning experience that incepts my children with a sense of pride and a positive attitude of ‘I can do it!’. As is also highlighted in Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, allowing children to make their own decisions during this age results in their sense of initiative and the opposite fills them with a feeling of ‘guilt’ and ‘good for nothing attitude’ which has its repercussions in the later stages of life. It is a sight to see how the young minds get together to perfectly follow the recipe based on its picture cards.

Print out a pictorial version of your Christmas cookie recipe and let your young chef take the lead in the kitchen while ensuring their safety. Don’t forget the camera when the cookies come out of the oven. I bet the sparkle in their eye on having accomplished the process will be priceless!

Empathy:

I love the story, ‘The rainbow fish’ by Marcus Pfister. It creates the perfect plot to teach children about sharing and more importantly, the happiness that it brings to your heart when you share with someone and make them happy. Every time we read that story in my preschool classroom, I plan a baking session as a follow up activity. Children work to make the best cookie and choose their favorite cookie cutter. They know that they are putting in their best effort and will be sharing it with their friend. It infuses them with an important social value of sharing and feeling ‘nice’ about putting their best effort to make someone else happy. (How about making Santa happy with those cookies this year?)

Following directions:

One of the important social skills that children develop during their preschool years is to be able to follow 1-3 step directions. Baking involves children in closely listening to directions and following the right sequence of events, which further enhances their listening, social competence as well as the cognitive ability to associate cause and effect relationship. “You always add chocolate chips in the end! It is easier to mix it that way!” It is surprising when you hear this from a four years old chef.

Emergent Literacy:

A family baking session always triggers the most comfortable and positive communication. Unknowingly, it also acts as the most engaging way to encourage literacy development in your preschooler. Try and print out a pictorial version of a Christmas cookie recipe that you and your child plan to make. It acts as a perfect visual for them to associate the sequence with pictures and also identify the beginning sounds of many ingredients. Once the smell of freshly baked cookies fills the air, have your preschooler draw the whole process and describe their experience in pictures and talk to them about their art work. You can also use this opportunity to write a postcard to grandpa and grandma about the wonders your little munchkin created in the kitchen! This encourages a self-initiative to write, which is an overwhelming skill for preschoolers, if enforced at an early age.

Baking for math:

It catches all my preschool parents by surprise when I tell them that I teach math lessons in the kitchen. I bake to teach math to my preschoolers. Baking lessons provide me with a perfect platform to create the most engaging math lesson for my preschoolers. I also use baking to do my beginning and end of the year math assessments. If this brought a smile on your face, imagine the fun it created for a preschooler. They did not even realize that they were being assessed! Ask your young chef to choose a cookie cutter and name its shape and viola! You create the perfect lesson to teach shapes. Ask them to make a pattern of the shapes later and there is one more math skill there!

It is hands on science:

Have you ever been intrigued as a child to see how ingredients react to each other when put in the oven? Even as an adult, I feel a smile running across my face when I see a dollop of dough spread into a perfectly round chocolate chip cookie! The whole baking experience teaches children the concept of cause and effect in a developmentally appropriate manner. During one of my baking lessons, we added more eggs to the cookie dough which made them chewier. It was a perfect opportunity for me to show my young kiddos why we put eggs in the cookie dough.

Create a cookie assortment and make some patterns!

As you get on to planning your holiday baking session with your young chef, make sure to have lots of fun in the kitchen! Get some chef hats print outs to color while the cookies are baking, may be read a Christmas story too. Remember to keep your camera turned on to capture the priceless memories created in the kitchen!

#Happyholidays !!

---

Annie Shah is the owner and teacher at ‘Annie & Friends! Preschool’ in Reno. Annie has been a preschool and kindergarten teacher since the past seven years. With a double masters in Early Childhood Education, Annie wishes to do nothing but create the best preschool experience for the young kiddos out there!

"Do what you do so well that people cannot stop talking about you." - Walt Disney