Cooking with your child can be a fun and rewarding way to bond and learn new skills. In this blog post, one of our parents shares her experience of attending a Children’s Kitchen class at Hartcliffe Nursery School with her son. She tells us how the class helped her son to try new foods, enjoy cooking at home, and develop healthy eating habits.
I had the pleasure of attending a Children’s Kitchen class at Hartcliffe Nursery with my child and we had a wonderful experience. Jo and the Children’s Kitchen team were very enthusiastic, encouraging, patient, fun and gave clear safety instructions. I already knew that he would enjoy the opportunity to chop up and get involved in cooking but I didn’t anticipate how much of a great opportunity this presented in introducing new foods! My son was not only tasting but actually eating foods he would normally not be comfortable with if I had prepared and put in front of him, but in the cooking class he ate everything including pak Choi which really surprised me!
We were given the option to bring home the pasta salad that Isaac made which he thoroughly enjoyed after he got home from nursery and it was a lovely and welcome surprise to receive the herbs and spices and recipe booklet which we’ll be building into our meal plans in the coming weeks.
Since then we have been cooking together regularly at home, I set up a station next to me so that I can watch him and make sure he’s safe and he can watch me and learn/refine skills. Isaac has continued to try everything he helps to prepare, often most of it gets eaten before it’s added to the meal! This has really improved the range of fresh and healthy foods that he is now willing to and eat including cooked meat that isn’t processed (finally!).
I’d like to thank Jo and the Children’s kitchen team and Hartcliffe Nursery to have had this experience. It was free which is important in the current economy and the benefits of cooking together are incredible. It’s inspired me to continue this at home because it entertains my son while meals are being prepared and cooked, he’s eating new and healthier foods, we’re cooking and eating more meals from scratch as a family so he’s learning cooking skills that he will have for a lifetime and maybe he’ll pass on to others one day and it’s lovely quality time to spend together. As a result of this we are continuing to make meals and memories together.
