{"id":3200,"date":"2017-08-27T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-27T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pinkimono.com\/?p=3200"},"modified":"2017-09-13T14:53:04","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T14:53:04","slug":"6-preschool-skills-to-practice-together-when-cooking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.pinkimono.com\/2017\/08\/27\/6-preschool-skills-to-practice-together-when-cooking\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooking With A Toddler? Here Are 6 Preschool Skills To Practice Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, my husband and I started our preschool search for our son! Dun dun duuunnnnn! So while we’re on the waiting list, we decided to do a special, weekly activity to help reinforce key preschool skills. Last week we baked rainbow cupcakes with the intention to review colors and patience. Little did I know that we would cover counting, making choices and so much more.<\/p>\n

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*This post may contain affiliate links. That means if you click on some of the product links, I may receive commissions for purchases made through them, but at no cost to you.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I decided to start with baking, specifically a rainbow cake, for two reasons. First, I remember reading in Bringing Up B\u00e9b\u00e9: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting<\/a>, by Pamela Druckerman, that baking is a great way to practice patience. Second I thought dying the batter would be a fun way to review colors. Little did I know how many other lessons and skills we could build upon during this lesson.<\/p>\n

The Ideal Cake Mix For Kids<\/h2>\n

I have to admit I was a little nervous about really<\/em> cooking in the kitchen with my kid for the first time. I see how Wes leaves his Little Tykes Kitchen<\/a> after 5 minutes…it ain’t pretty. But I decided to just get over it and purchased a box of Duff Tie Dye Premium Cake Mix<\/a>\u00a0from Target.<\/p>\n

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Photo Credit: Amazon.com<\/p><\/div>\n

This cake mix comes from Duff Goldman of Charm City Cakes<\/a> and the Food Network’s Ace of Cakes<\/em>. I chose this particular cake mix because I thought the vibrant colors would be great for my son and because I didn’t need to buy food coloring.<\/p>\n

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Photo Credit: Amazon.com<\/p><\/div>\n

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Plus the box itself looked amazing and I knew the concept would be easier for him to understand and get excited about versus a box of plain cake mix.<\/p>\n

Set Your Kitchen Up To Bake With A Toddler<\/h2>\n

Like most kids his age, Westley is easily excitable which in my mind means a big mess! So I took a few precautionary steps to make our sure our baking lesson would allow us to stay focus on colors and patience\u00a0versus going off the rails.I did not want to this turn into a lesson on cleaning up a catastrophic kitchen mess.<\/p>\n

To get ready, I did 3 things:<\/p>\n

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  1. Kept the messy ingredients up high. I staged a “no-touch” area of my countertop for the eggs, oil and food coloring.<\/li>\n
  2. Had the main show on his level. The “tie-dying” is what allows for the majority of the lessons with this recipe. So I used my laptop desk<\/a> from IKEA what can be adjusted to his height as our tie-dye station. I decided against having him stand on a chair at the kitchen table because I felt like it left too much to chance for slipping off of or spilling batter onto our kitchen stools.\n

  3. Ditched the toddler top. I thought it was best for Wes to cook sans shirt since I didn’t have a kid apron. This way if she spilled the colorful batter on himself, I wouldn’t have to worry about losing another shirt to the stain gods.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The 6 Preschool Skills Of The Rainbow Cake<\/h2>\n

    After setting up the lesson for success and little mom-stress, we started following the steps on the box. Once we had the batter base we separated it into 6 dishes so we could color them based on the primary & secondary colors. That’s when I realized that we were going to cover more than just colors and patience. Here are the 6 main lessons that organically emerged in order once we \u00a0got cooking:<\/p>\n

    Counting<\/h3>\n