Cooking brings in a whole range of skills and draws on different types of subjects including language, maths, social studies, and science, which is why it’s a fantastic way for foster children to interact with foster carers. Whether it’s reading recipes, experimenting, exploring new foods, baking, and anything else in between, here are five reasons why you should let your foster children help in the kitchen.
Building Life Skills and Confidence
When you include foster children in creating weekly meal plans, putting together shopping lists, and heading to the shops, it helps to teach budgeting, planning, and goal setting. As well as this, the ability to cook will enable older foster children to help out around the home, which they’ll feel is highly rewarding. As well as the practical skill of cooking, interacting with the kitchen will teach foster children about failure, which helps to improve resilience and increases their confidence levels.
Strengthens Family Bonds
Enjoying meals together as a family unit is a great way to promote healthy conversation and relationships, but this can all start in the kitchen. Prepping meals together will convert into memories that foster children will take with them forever. By exploring recipes and learning from each other, the whole family will become closer.
Improves Mental Health
Foster children come from traumatic backgrounds, which can lead to low self-esteem, depression, and other conditions. However, according to Anne Fishel from The Family Dinner Project, the act of cooking as a family reduces instances of teen pregnancy, depression, and substance abuse, but it also improves grades, boosts self-esteem, and builds resilience.
Cooking is Educational
Everyone at fosteringpeople.co.uk will tell you that providing opportunities for enjoyment and education are fundamental parts of being a foster carer. When a child engages in cooking, it will improve motor skills, increase vocabulary, and help them to explore mathematical and scientific concepts. Cooking also helps to teach essential life skills like reading recipes, measuring ingredients and reading recipes.
Promotes Healthy Eating
There’s no better place to learn about healthy eating than the kitchen, so bring your foster children in on the experience. While you’re cooking, you can teach them about safe food handling including the importance of hand washing and keeping prep areas clean. As well as this, when children help to cook healthy foods, they’re more likely to eat them because they put hard work into it.
If you need inspiration for healthy recipes to explore, take a look at this article on healthy recipes to cook with children.
A Note on Age-Appropriate Cooking
As a foster carer, it’s your responsibility to ensure the safety of the children in your care, which means preventing unnecessary injuries in the kitchen. Therefore, spend time learning about how to assign age-appropriate tasks.
Inviting foster children to help in the kitchen will strengthen that all-important relationship, improve confidence levels, and help to teach essential life skills. However, make sure everyone stays safe in the kitchen by teaching safe practices and assigning the correct tasks.
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