Kitchen: Fun,food and Infant :)

My baby used to sleep a lot in his initial months and things were a lot easier then..But.now his waking time exceeds his sleeping hours and I have no option but to take him with me to the kitchen while preparing the “stuff” required to fill one’s tummy and tingle one’s taste buds -Food!

When I started taking over my son with me in his pram while doing all the chores in the kitchen,I realised that kitchen was not just a space for cooking and cleaning utensils,but with a little effort and creativity from your side,you can transform your kitchen into a laboratory with promising opportunities filled with lessons and fun for your infant… Below are listed some of the things that I do and how I think it will benefit my child:

1)Exposure to sounds: In the early years,it is very essential to expose your baby to different kinds of sounds as it enables him to learn that there are voices other than your mama’s and papa’s.The spluttering of mustard seeds in the oil, the whistle blowing in the pressure cooker, the clank clank noise of the utensils all give child a knowledge of various sounds. He tries to track from where the sound comes from and making your child track noises is a good exercise for his little brain.

2)Learning shapes : You can teach shapes to your kids in the kitchen.For instance,if you are making an omelette,show him the egg before cracking it and tell him that the egg is oval in shape. Take a bread and show it to him and say that it is a square.And if you are making chappatis,you can roll it to a circular shape and tell him that the chappati has the shape of a circle.

3)Identifying colors: You can show your kids the various things that you will be using for cooking and tell them the color of such object. For example, if you are going to cut an apple, then show it to your child and say that it is red in color. When you are using green bell pepper,you can teach the kids that the color is green,the egg is white and that water has no color.

4) Daily magic: You can show all the ingredients that you are going to use for cooking to your child first and then show him the process of making or mixing it and finally allow him to discover that the final product is entirely different from what was used initially for cooking or mixing. If you are preparing a dough,you may start like this ” See, now mama is going to put in this round bowl 1 cup of flour,a little salt and a little water..and now I am mixing it and mixing it and abracadabra  there is a fine round ball in the bowl…Magic!! No flour,no water…” This might sound insane to a grown-up but trust me,there is nothing funnier than this for your little one.