Exploding Your Kitchen: The Art of Cooking with Kids

The evening turned into night. The crickets are singing, the kids are sleeping. The kitchen, boisterous a few hours earlier, is tired looking. The dishes have been roughly cleaned up, but the evidence of learning is scattered about the floor. Oats, vanilla extract, a bit of flour, a blob of a mystery object—food art, as only children know how to create. I am sitting on the floor, amid the art, debating whether I am going to clean tonight. I am eating malformed M&M cookies.

I have had in the back of my mind how I want to write something with the tag #preschoolroundup, and here the inspiration stares me in the face.

This evening I set to work on a task I take on every week or so. I sacrificed my kitchen, and the children cooked something. When taking on a task like this, one should be prepared for a few things.

First, it is best to mill your wheat into flour with a very loud mill-machine-thing. The noise is sort of hypnotic. The children will stop arguing about who has which chair, and which chair has the best access, etc., and just stare at the machine.

Next, carefully consider the toddler’s proximity to other things. For instance, if you are foolish enough to place a toddler next to a sink, you deserve what is coming to you and your floor.

How a child cracks an eggs says a lot about his personality. I’ve seen a kid cause an egg to explode. My children don’t do that though. Instead, they daintily knock it against a bowl until the tiniest possible crack forms, and despite my commentary on the matter, try to carefully pry the egg apart from that crack. This, by the way, is not excellent for using the contents of the eggshell for anything related to food. At least not human food. The dogs love when an egg hits the floor.

There will be tears shed and the toddler may get violent over who rightfully gets to pour in the oats and flour. Fortunately a violent toddler is pretty tame. Oats and flour will go flying.

M&M’s will be eaten before they make it into the cookie dough, and that’s okay. Many low quality pictures will be taken by the photographer, because it is next to impossible to get children to hold still while eating M&M’s. That’s okay too.

Children will then be given the job of “rolling the dough into one inch balls”. The kindergartener heard something about “roll dough”. The toddler just heard “dough”. You will then go behind the children and reform and rearranged the cookie dough.

The toddler will stand guard over the uncooked dough, continually reminding you that you have not yet put it in the oven. And then when the cookies are out, she will stand guard over hot cookies, shouting at anywhere near to stay back.

And there, mission accomplished: measuring and pouring practiced, a love of cooking is instilled, the kitchen has exploded, and cookies have been ingested. All is well.