Nat can cook!

A friend of mine related this to me once

I don’t have much memory of my late mom but I do remember helping my late mom to bake once, and that memory has stuck with me till now. I loved being able to create something with my mom.

This has inspired me to try cooking with Nat too! This week’s theme was on Kitchen Appliances, so cooking activity was a good way to re-enforce her learning. It also gives her a whole new experience with regards to food. We bought her a cooking play set many months back in preparation for this day. I was so excited about this activity with Nat. Our first official cooking sessions together. I wasn’t quite sure if we could pull this off without making a big mess of the kitchen, but YES! We did it! And without much mess whew! I was really glad to see Nat so engaged with this cooking session we had today. It was really tiring for me but it is really worth it 🙂

Day 2: I brought out all the kitchen utensils, including those we bought yesterday for our shopping trip. After recapping on the different utensils and its functions, I let her play on her cooking play set as an intro to the real thing later in the afternoon. (I wanted to do it for our breakfast but figured we would need more time for our first attempt, so our cooking session became our lunch for today). She was taught new vocab in class like stirring, chopping, which will be mentioned again later for our cooking and in doing so, making the word more meaningful to her. I have also been letting Nat play with the measuring cup during her water play, today we finally get to used it on an actual setting.

Preparing her for the real session later..:) 

Showing her words listed on the paper while we go through the different ingredients for our cooking. I learn this from Nat’s teacher that this is one way to help them associate words better.

Introducing one of the kitchen appliances she was introduced to. Plastic Colander. (I din even knew this..haha)

re-enforcing its usage. Nat just love playing with water

Time for action! First..personal hygene

Introducing cutting. I had to be really careful with this but Nat was very obedient to my instructions because she knows what pain means ..ha

Showed Nat the steps in our cooking sessions as we go along

Nat just love cracking the eggs, wanted to crack all the eggs we had..haha. And she din make too much mess out of it..Whew!

Got her to stir the eggs. A new vocab she learnt in class.

Officially introducing the measuring cup and its actual usage

I asked her to stop at the 1/4 mark

More pouring and mixing. Good way to practice on her hand control

Got Nat to soak the bread with the mixure while I started frying them

Nat is using her plastic knife while I was frying the bread. She was suppose to cut into pieces to go with the toast but she kept eating it while cutting 🙂

YES We did it! Nat can cook! So can you! …I’m just being elated right now.

Observation: We took about 2.5 hours with this cooking experience. When it was placed before her for her lunch, she exclaimed “Wow..so nice”. I guess its about TAKING OWNERSHIP, I guess children will appreciate things a lot more when they feel they have a part in it. I hope this can become part of her beautiful memories in time to come. Who knows she may become the next 3 star Michelin chef 🙂

I blogged about training self-control in a post Counting Your Cereals. I have been applying it constantly in Nat’s growing up and I credit this practice to Nat’s good behavior during cooking today. She was able to listen to instructions and not start grabbing things that interest her ..like the eggs..haha. This really makes work a whole lot easier for me.

This whole morning was filled with fun activities for Nat. I notice she was extremely obedient and happy there after. Seems like purposeful play does makes a happy child 🙂

Definitely more of such cooking together with Nat from here on 🙂