5 reasons to bake with kids, mess and all.

When our children were young, I spent on average 5-8 hours a day in my kitchen preparing food and cleaning up to ensure they could eat fun, delicious, food with clean ingredients.  When I began baking almost everything from scratch, our now middle child, was about one.  Our oldest was four so she could be more helpful in the kitchen. It was imperative for me to have my girls in the kitchen at such a young age.  Here are the things I learned about having them in the kitchen with me so young.  If your kids are older, there is no better time than now to start baking with them.

1. Safety.  My children were so young, they needed to be in the kitchen with me to be supervised.  I couldn’t let them be somewhere else in the house while I was in the kitchen most of the day.  It was safety that first brought my kids into the kitchen with me.
2. To bake for themselves one day.  The best way to learn is by being in the kitchen.  One of our jobs as parents is to ensure our kids can take care of themselves when they leave our home.  The biggest way for us to prepare our children to leave our home one day is to teach them how to prepare food for themselves.  If you have kids with food allergies or celiac disease, this is even more important for them to know how to make and buy safe foods.
3. Memories.  The amount of time I spent with our children in our kitchen was precious time.  It was time that we talked about life, about our day, teaching math skills (hello measuring), finding our family favorites, and more.  Our time in the kitchen together was rich and created many memories.
4. Grows our patience.  Having our children in the kitchen grows our patience as parents, whether we want it grown or not. ;-)  It is slow when they are young and the messes are often large, but none of it is time wasted.  The mess can be cleaned up and we get to learn to slow down and enjoy time with our children.
5. R.O.I.  When we teach our children to cook and bake at a young age, the rewards will come back when they are older.  Our children are now a bit older and each of them are very capable in the kitchen.  Just this week, all of our children made a full dinner from scratch for us so we could have a date night at home.  Trust me, the time you spend in the kitchen with your children when they are young is completely worth it!