A fun and interactive way to “read” with our kids this summer is to use cookbooks. As we BOOK TIME WITH OUR KIDS, we can turn “booking” into cooking!

There are so many benefits to using cookbooks with our kiddoes. We’re asking them to read, think, evaluate, and create all at the same time! As a retired teacher, I like that we’re covering a lot of higher thinking skills (Bloom’s Taxonomy) with this family activity.

My daughter-in-law gave me a cookbook titled The Family Dinner by Laurie David, with recipes by Kirstin Uhrenholdt.  The focus of the book is beautifully described in the forward by Harvey Karp, MD: “It’s so important for us to start seeing mealtime as more than just a pit stop to pack in protein.  It’s a hugely beneficial time for us to serve our kids generous doses of vitamin S- satisfying social interaction….(and later)….scientific studies only confirm what most of us already know to be true in our hearts: eating dinner as a family enriches our lives and our children’s lives on many different levels.”  And I’m going to add this: preparing the meal together only adds to all of the other benefits.

Throughout The Family Dinnerthere are contributions from all sorts of writers and chefs.  One that struck my heartstrings was “Dinnertime Musings” by Mark Bittman, a cook at home and a writer for the New York Times.  In “Dinnertime Musings” (p 105) he writes, “I think The Joy of Cooking is one of the best cook book titles of all time.  It really sums it up.  Cooking with your kids is a short-term joy with long-term benefits. You have to spend time educating your kids about the kitchen, about food, about eating right, about shopping and the responsibilities of cleaning up. I used to say to my kids, “Cleaning up is part of dinner.”  You don’t eat dinner and disappear. You eat dinner, and part of the eating of dinner is making the house look good again.  Otherwise, the cook is going to be very unhappy, and that cook is me!”   Okay, I love this…. “Cleaning up is part of dinner”!

But back to reading 😊- the benefits of reading through cookbooks together and then making decisions and cooking together are just endless.  I would also like to offer the idea of setting the table together beforehand.   This lost art can be fun,  and this can also be helpful in teaching manners at the table.  Why is this important?  Setting the table properly sets the tone that this time is special, it’s meaningful, it’s non-negotiable, and it matters to our family.   

With these dinnertime activities, we are teaching manners, teaching responsibility, READING with, CREATING with, and having interaction with our littles!  The cherry on top is the fact that (hopefully, right?), we’ll have something delicious to eat together too.

Teaching our littles about cooking can lend itself to teaching about nutrition as well. Booking Time with our Kiddoes in this way can lead into conversations about the importance of healthy eating and how it can provide healing in our perfectly designed bodies. Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.“ I know, the nutrition piece may be a “stretch” if we’re baking cobblers and cookies…..but the FUN element of booking and cooking still stands!

Thanks for reading! Please share and subscribe for ideas of how we can BOOK TIME WITH OUR KIDS!