One of the most exciting ways to teach kids is through cooking. Every moment is filled with opportunities to teach counting, measuring, texture, spelling, Language, shapes, and colors. When cooking, be sure to try to incorporate them in each action and talk to them about what you are doing as you do it.

Here are a few of our favorite ways that you can teach your child each of these things creatively in the kitchen:

Measuring & Counting: Use the measuring cups to teach counting. As you pour each ingredient in. If your child is just beginning to learn numbers, then help them read the measurements and do it along with them. For older kids, you can learn all about fractions by using a recipe that has a lot of fractional measurements such as ¼ cup and so on.

Color: As mentioned, one of the most important elements when using cooking as your learning tool is to be as talkative and descriptive as possible, especially with younger children. As you mix and blend, talk to them about what colors each of the ingredients are. This is an excellent way to teach your child colors with everyday things.

Smart Idea: Help our child develop an eye for color by observing the color changes when ingredients are mixed together. Also, food coloring comes in the basic primary colors, so practicing color mixing the primary colors for icing can be loads of fun! Tip: start off with white icing to achieve more shades of colors.

Shapes: This is especially fun when baking cookies, but can be used with pretty much any recipe. Practice the names of he shapes of the ingredients as well as the shapes that the recipe may call for, ie. Square, circle, oblong, etc.

Smart Idea: For older children, you can surprisingly incorporate basic geometry & statistics while cooking. Practice and teach the basic geometry terms when cutting, making shapes, drawing lines & angles in dough, and using your ingredients & once finished, review the recipe and practice collecting data/statistics. Like I said. The possibilities are endless when you tap into your creative mama mode!

Texture: This is especially wonderful for the little ones. Let them feel, smash, and squish some of the ingredients and let the describe how it feels.

Smart Idea: Tell your child to close their eyes and feel certain ingredients/products in the kitchen, and then have them guess what it is. Count & add up how many items they got correct and wrong along with them (again practicing counting and adding).

Spelling/Language: There are words on every ingredient used when cooking. Practice letters and spelling, and pronunciation with each ingredient used.

Smart Idea: Make a spelling list using the words that are used within the recipe, then test them on it some time later.

Almost any daily activity such as cooking can be used to teach simple and complex subjects. From learning shapes and colors with toddlers to developing geometry and algebra skills with teens, learning can be found anywhere you choose to use your creativity!