The 10 Cooking Skills kids could master during Lockdown

With fresh ideas for child friendly activities being nearly as hard to come by as flour, and schools facing a slow and staggered return; most parents are finding themselves in need of new educational activities to keep the kids learning while at home.

If this sounds like you, why not head to your kitchen for some education inspiration? To help you get started and to celebrate the launch of a set of brand-new home education workbooks; Maple from Canada UK has shared some top tips for making the kitchen the perfect learning environment.

Here’s a list of the ten cooking skills every child should master during lockdown.

• Patience
Cooking, baking and preparing food takes time and patience. By getting your children involved with following longer recipes, they will develop their understanding of time and having patience.

• Following instructions
By helping out in the kitchen children will practice their listening skills and ability to follow instructions. Older children who are able to read and follow instructions independently can also try to relay the instructions in a recipe to practice their communications skills.

• Trying new things
The kitchen is a great place to get inspired and try new things, whether it’s cooking a new recipe or creating an exciting tasting platter with foods from around the world, it’s perfect for new discoveries.

• Health and nutrition
You guessed it, cooking and preparing food can be a great, practical way to introduce children to health, nutrition and balanced eating.

• Basic maths
From counting, right through to division and multiplication, following a recipe or changing the ratios requires basic maths. Get younger children counting the number of scoops or whole ingredients as they cook and encourage older children to do some more complicated cooking maths such as dividing or multiplying recipe quantities.

• Improvisation and creativity
Food and cooking open up the mind to improvisation and creativity. Often you have to think on your feet while you cook. By cooking different foods from around the world we also get exposed to new flavours and techniques while building confidence to test our own ideas and create bold new combinations.


• Reading and literacy
Reading is a fundamental skill and following recipes requires a good level of literacy. Younger children can help boost word recognition and grow their vocabulary from learning new ingredients and methods. Meanwhile, older children can develop and strengthen their reading comprehension by following recipes.

• Dexterity and technique
Cooking allows tiny hands to develop hand eye co-ordination, improve dexterity and practice advanced food preparation techniques.

• Provenance
Understanding how and where food is produced will help children make better decisions around their health, the welfare of food producers and animals and the impact on the planet.

• Family fun
The most important part of learning is having fun. Cooking is the perfect activity to get the whole family involved, so make the most of your time at home and spend some great quality time together.

For more fun, kitchen-based learning ideas, Maple from Canada UK has developed five education workbooks suitable from under-fives, up to the early teenage years. The activities help build curiosity, confidence and valuable life skills within a kitchen environment as well as educating children on food provenance, using pure Canadian maple syrup as an example.

Each of the five home education workbooks (Under 5, 5-7, 8-10, 11-14 and 14+) feature two age appropriate recipes, a food-themed task, along with suggestions for other fun and educational activities. You can download and print the workbooks for free from www.maplefromcanada.co.uk/education/kitchen-adventures where you will also find loads of tasty, family friendly recipes to try at home.