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Cooking with Kids

Each week, you will find an easy, kid-friendly recipe that is related to our book selection. For example, if the book of the week is If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, you might whip up a batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies; if it’s Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten, the recipe might just be Miss Bindergarten’s Baked Apples. See all our storybook-inspired recipes here. 

 

Benefits of Cooking with Kids

Cooking with your child is one of the best ways to extend the fun of the story and promote literacy skills at the same time. 

  • Talking about the ingredients and directions in a recipe boosts vocabulary and helps develop oral communications skills.
  • Measuring, stirring, and using cooking tools builds self-confidence and helps develop small-motor control.
  • As with art, the process of cooking encourages creativity, enhances self-esteem and even helps develop and understanding of cause and effect.

 

In our recipes, we give the basic directions so that you can read them aloud together with your child. It's up to you to determine what steps your child can do: simple tasks such a stirring and dumping measured ingredients are things any child can do, while older or more advanced children might be able to peel, cut herbs with kitchen scissors, or measure on their own.

Let them do as much as possible! It won't be perfect! Messes will be made, things will be spilled, flour might make its way into your hair, but that’s part of the experience and delight of cooking! 

 

You might also enjoy browsing through our Cookbooks for Kids selections in the Off the Shelf Shop. 

Here are some helpful charts from thirtyhandmadedays.com. Enjoy!

Kitchenskillsbyage30daysblog

Kitchenrulesforkids30daysblog

Welcome to Off the Shelf! Here you will find beloved picture books that have come to life through open-ended art activities, recipes designed to get kids cooking, and so much more!
We hope to not only inspire children’s love of reading but also spark their imaginations, nurture their creativity, and show them that the whole world can be a place to explore. Besides all that, they will have fun! And it all begins with a book.
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Gardening Books and Activities

  • The Carrot Seed
    The Carrot Seed
    by Ruth Krauss illustrated by Crockett Johnson Dear Friends, Although The Carrot Seed was originally published in 1945, the allure of playing in the dirt is still the same for kids today as it was then. The fascination of growing things, of exploring leaves and sticks, discovering what's under a...
  • A Tree is Nice
    A Tree is Nice
    Dear Friends, Trees are the perfect childhood friends. How many summer days are spent playing in the shade of a tree? Or fall afternoons spent tramping in the the fallen leaves? In imaginative play, tree can be almost anything, from houses to spaceships, as well as base in a game...
  • My Garden
    My Garden
    by Kevin Henkes A garden that doesn’t grow weeds but instead has jelly bean bushes, chocolate rabbits, tomatoes as big as beach balls, and never-ending flowers are just a few of the wonders of our little gardener in Kevin Henkes beautiful, imaginative My Garden . Illustrated with ink and watercolor...

Support Off the Shelf by buying your children's books through the various Amazon affiliate links throughout the blog.

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