Teach Your Child to Read in the Kitchen!

Children love to be in the kitchen cooking with you!  The best learning takes place when they are having fun. Follow these great ideas to teach important literacy skills while having fun with your children!

1.  Cook together and chat while you do.  When you cook with children, they learn how to combine ingredients, mix, stir and taste.  But they also learn language.  They use nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs as they talk about what they're doing.

2.  Read a recipe together.  The recipe is made of words and pictures that communicate exactly what to do.  By doing each step in order, the finished product will be delicious!

3.  Plan a grocery list.  Collect any coupons you can find.  Shop together.

4.  Read cookbooks!  Usborne has the best kid-friendly cookbooks such as The Children's World Cookbook,First Cookbook,

The Usborne Children's Cookbook,  Fairy Cooking,and The Usborne Healthy Cookbook.  Check out yesterday's book review on The Usborne Healthy Cookbook.

5.  Make your own menus.

6.  Make place-card labels with everyone's name.

7.  Read food labels and talk about nutrition.

8.  Make at least one meal a day when you can all sit down together and talk about your day.  Conversation builds vocabulary and togetherness.