What’s Cooking in the Kitchen? Literacy and Reading!

Boost Literacy in Preschoolers Through Kitchen Fun!

• What’s the coolest letter in the alphabet? Iced T!
• What do writers eat for breakfast? Synonym rolls!

Early literacy development begins long before kindergarten. In fact, the first three years of life are crucial for language acquisition. Your child’s early experiences with language – playing, singing, reading, writing, and talking – lay the foundation for their future language skills. The kitchen offers a fantastic environment to nurture early literacy skills while helping children build confidence, independence, and practical life skills. 

Learning Letters – Simply letting kids play with their food opens up all kinds of fun and engaging literacy possibilities!

• Making pancakes? Instead of making round ones, use a ketchup bottle to pour letter-shaped pancakes. 
• Homemade Pretzels? Let your kids shape the dough into the first letter of their name - they’ll eat it up!
• Pasta night? Try writing words with strands of cooked spaghetti. 

Print Awareness – Recipes are excellent tools for demonstrating the practical reasons for reading.

When following a recipe, read it aloud slowly, pointing to each word as you read. This helps children learn the directionality of written English (left to right and top to bottom). 

Vocabulary Building – Cooking and baking introduce children to new words in a natural context.

• New Words: Cooking terms (whisk! chop! sizzle!) become part of your child’s vocabulary.
• Procedural Words: They’ll also learn words like first, next, and last that are frequently used in directions.  
• Narration: You can extend their learning by  narrating their actions (e.g., “you’re pouring the milk into the bowl!”)

Fine Motor Skills – Common cooking tasks are excellent for developing the fine motor skills they’ll need to be able to write legibly with a pen/pencil!

• Scooping and Stirring: Improve hand-eye coordination.
• Cracking Eggs: Develops hand strength and dexterity.

Best of all, kids develop these skills while spending quality time with a favorite adult – you!

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