Friday nights at our house are usually when we let our little ones have a little fun in the kitchen. I wanted to share one of our favorite cooking activities with you.
Fabulous Fruit Pizza
This is one of my favorite cooking activities for kids because kids of any age can be involved.
Between measuring, reading a recipe, and following the steps of a recipe, the kitchen is a great place for your little ones to learn some new skills.
The first thing you need to do is have your little ones help you make a list of their favorite fruits
some of ours include:
strawberries
raspberries (my son's favorites)
blueberries
kiwi (my daughter's favorite)
peaches
Once you have purchased the fruits have your kids help with the preparations. They can wash the fruit, and they can even use a small plastic knife to help you slice the fruit. My daughter's (4 years old) job was to slice the peaches and the strawberries in half ( great way to start introducing beginning fractions)....my son (1 1/2) , kept busy eating the blueberries.
With my little one I let him taste each of the fruits, as he ate it I told him the name of the fruit and my daughter told him what color it was. When we were done I asked him to point to the strawberry...blueberry...raspberry.
For my daughter since we are working on letter sounds I asked her to help me with the beginning sounds for the fruit. What does strawberry start with?
Once the fruit is cut you can set it in the fridge to chill.
The next step is my son and daughters favorite, they love to get their hands into everything so smooshing and spreading cookie dough is right up their alley.....In a pie plate use 1 tube of refrigerated sugar cookie dough and have your little ones spread it out in the greased pie pan. I encourage my daughter to count to 5 while she is doing it and then pass it to her brother...they take turns doing this until it is just right. Kaitlyn loves the responsibility of being the time keeper and Callen just loves to get his fingers in the dough.
Once the cookie dough is spread out in the pie pan cook it at 350 degrees for 16 - 20 minutes or until slightly brown. Let completely cool.....this is when we get a family movie started.
Halfway through our movie we get back in the kitchen and finish our fruit pizza.
Mix together 8oz softened cream cheese with 1/3 cup sugar and 1tsp of vanilla
Blend together till creamed.
Spread on top of the cooled cookie crust.
Have your little ones take all of the prepared fruit and stack it up on top of the cream cheese filing....remember the goal is to get them to do it...it can be messy...it can be imperfect.....we are not aiming for the cover of Martha Stewart here. In fact if you do it right your kitchen will look like a tornado went through, there will be fruit on the floor, and somehow cream cheese will wind up on the ceiling, and/or the dog's tail....that's ok because you had fun learning and cooking with your kids.
When you are all done you have a yummy treat your kids will enjoy!
Just like the yummy fruit you snuck into their dessert time you also snuck a lot of learning and fun into making it. Involving your kids in the kitchen is a great way to jump start their learning while having a whole lot of fun! What yummy things do your kids like to cook up?
0 comments:
Post a Comment