Do you remember having a kitchen set as a child and pretending to make meals for the family. It’s fun looking now watching my 4 yr old girl do the same thing. I’ve always thought is extremely important for children of all ages to participate in in “pretend”. It probably stems from the joy I had engaging in it as a child and my background as a former elementary school teacher. When I was a child, I was always pretending something. Whether it was as simple as pretending I was an ‘adult’ (a.k.a. dressing up in my mother’s clothing) or as elaborate as planning and carrying out a meal with all my furry friends (a.k.a. my stuffed animals) and my mother’s cheap dinnerware.
Kids playing with dinnerware at a play kitchen set
I try to let my daughter get involved in the nightly ritual of cooking. Even if it’s something as simple as grabbing a plastic bowl from our pantry cabinets, I want her to feel like she is doing her part. The day I let her do the entire dinner I will most likely buy some corelle dinnerware clearance so if anything gets broken it won’t hurt my pocketbook to much.
My favorite childhood memory of baking with my mom was the annual tradition of making homemade fudge at Christmas. I would always help stir the fudge in the pan to prevent it from burning while it achieved the perfect temperature. My mother knew that when it hit that temperature we only had a window of 15 seconds to get it out and on the plate. If we waited to long, it would be to hard. If we did it to early, it would never get hard enough. Funny thing is, we never did time it right and it always ended up one way or the other. I still loved doing it.
What are some of your favorite childhood memories of helping your mom cook or bake?
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