cooking with a three-year-old

As his interest grows, I’ve been having my boy help a little more in the kitchen. This week he cut up two zucchini using a butter knife. I demonstrated and then let him at it. It took forever for him to chop it up. The pieces weren’t even. And then he started whining when I took over at the end. It ends up to be more work to have “help” than if I did it all myself, but I’m banking on a good return on the investment one day.

This is a lesson I learned from my dad. We were feeding hay and cleaning mangers before we really knew what we were doing. But it gave us structured meaningful activity, and we learned by doing – and lots of constructive (and not so constructive) criticism. Since we haven’t got any farm chores around here, it’ll have to be household chores. Now, once I summon up enough courage and patience to start him on washing dishes, we’ll really be in business…