成人快手

Not only is cooking together a great way to encourage more adventurous eating, but it is also a fun language learning opportunity that can help with everything from counting to descriptive language.

In the video below, we share some of our top tips for boosting your child's language when cooking together.

Always supervise children when using cooking appliances and utensils and ensure they only handle safe ingredients.

What are the benefits of cooking with your child

  • Chatting while cooking together will let your child hear new words that they might not use every day.
  • Talking about what you're going to cook and how you're going to do it gives them an opportunity to talk in the future tense.
  • Counting out the ingredients lets your child practise numbers and comparison words, like more or less.
  • Discussing the different steps of a recipe helps your child follow instructions and teaches them about sequences and order in sentences.
  • Cooking together is a great way to bond with your child, have fun and chat with them.

Top tips for cooking with your child and boosting their language

When you're cooking together, use lots of different describing words and open questions. Your child learns by hearing you talk.

Encourage them to make choices by asking things like, 鈥楧o you want the green pepper or the red pepper?鈥

See if they can find the ingredients you ask for around the kitchen. This will help their comprehension (understanding) skills and challenge their memory, as they have to remember where certain foods live.

Adjectives like rough, smooth, shiny, heavy, light, fluffy, greasy, crisp, crunchy are all words they might not use all the time.

While you鈥檙e cooking, let them touch the ingredients, talk about how they feel, what they smell like and their colour.

Let them count out the ingredients for some early maths practise and help them learn about sequences by asking them what comes next.

Discuss the ingredients you'll need. If you are missing some ingredients, talk about going to the shop and what else you might need to buy.

If you have a younger child, find out how to include them in family cooking and mealtimes.

Want some recipe inspiration? Check out these cheap, easy and child-friendly recipes from Miguel Barclay.

Another family prepare food together

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