5 Ways Cooking With Your Kids Brightens Their Future

When I told my sister-in-law that my son cooked family dinner last weekend she was stunned. She couldn’t believe he could do it on his own, or frankly, that we trusted him to.

My wife and I started teaching our kids basic cooking skills in 1st or 2nd grade. Cooking is a vehicle for teaching many valuable life skills in a fun way. This is why at Greensbury we provide easy to cook recipes the kids will love.

Each step of the cooking process pairs with a crucial life skill. Here’s a quick breakdown of what we focus on with each step.

Meal Planning:

• Meal planning reinforces organizational and interpersonal skills. Although we let our kids choose a meal, we ask questions like “do we have enough time to make this on a school night?” or “will everyone enjoy eating this meal?” along the way.

Shopping:

• Shopping is a great way to introduce time management and financial awareness. If we don’t have proteins they have to figure out if Greensbury can get it to us on time. When we buy our veggies they get introduced to budgeting and price analysis.

Meal Prep:

• Meal Prep hits on time management again. The earlier they understand that time is finite and that they need to plan ahead the better. The act of defrosting, marinating, and cooking proteins by our 6:30 pm dinner is perfect for this.

Cooking:

• Cooking is really just a fun math lesson. We’re big fans of leftovers, so we often double our recipes. Converting the recipe’s measurements is great mental math practice!

Reviewing

• We review and share our thoughts each dinner. This is not only a great way to foster a family conversation, but it also gets the kids to think more critically and teaches them to appropriately articulate and defend their opinions.