Fun Things to Do With Kids & Food

They say kids shouldn't play with their food, but there are exceptions to every rule. You can use food to engage your kids in educational activities that are exciting and also tasty. You can do lots of things from baking cookies to making cool food crafts. Plan food-related activities based on the ages of your kids as well as their food preferences.

  1. Cooking Activities

    • Cooking with kids is not only fun, it can also help reinforce math skills and introduce your children to basic cooking skills. Decide how your kids can help you with cooking based on their age and maturity level. Toddlers and preschoolers can help with things like mixing batters, tossing salad and putting a spread on bread. School-aged children can measure ingredients, use a hand mixer and chop vegetables with a plastic knife and your supervision. Tweens and teens should be able to complete multiple-step recipes with supervision and use the stove, oven and other kitchen appliances.

    Fun Food Experiments

    • Use food for science experiments you can do with your kids. It could be as simple as investigating how much water different types of dried beans can absorb to more complex experiments such as determining how much energy is stored in certain types of foods. Your kids could also learn the science behind their favorite sweet treats, for example, how the freezing point of water is lowered to make ice cream or what fruits can keep a gelatin dessert from solidifying.

    Crafting with Food

    • Turn food into art with simple craft projects. For example, your kids can glue colored pasta shapes such as macaroni, penne and rigatoni on paper to make designs. They can make snowmen using marshmallow stacked on top of each other, using dabs of peanut butter to keep them attached. Halve potatoes and then carve out shapes in the flesh, which your child will dip in paint for potato stamping. Make a caterpillar from banana slices, using pretzel pieces for antennas and also to connect the pieces together.

    Food Challenges

    • Keep the kids entertained with zany food challenges. You can tie a string to donuts and hang them from a doorway or from a tree branch in your yard. The kids must race to eat the donut with their hands behind their backs. You can also have a traditional pie eating contest, using individual four-inch pies for the kids. You can play food guessing games, blindfolding the kids and feeding them food items that they have to name correctly.

    2. Previous:

    Next:

    • What Are the Benefits of Outdoor Games in Children?
      In a world of videogames, smart phones, and texting, todays children are less likely to engage in the kinds of outdoor play that previous generations enjoyed. Encouraging your kids to participate in outdoor games can reap many benefits that will serv
    • Losing Baby Teeth and Visits From the Tooth Fairy
      Children usually lose their first tooth sometime between age six and seven years old. Some kids are a little earlier and others a little later though. One big influence seems to be the timing of when he started getting teeth and when he got his la
    • How to Use Oil Paints With Children
      Painting can provide an excellent creative outlet for children. Because oil paints dry more slowly than acrylic, water colors or latex paints, they offer longer manipulation time on the canvas and greater color blending opportunities. Oil paints are