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One of my jobs as a mother is to teach my kids to be self sufficient. It is really important to me to know that when my kids go out on their own they know how to take care of themselves. I know so many young adults who have gone out on their own and have no idea how to cook for themselves or even do their own laundry. My mission, since the kids were very young, is to slowly teach them self sufficiency through well thought out chores. Check out our Age Appropriate Chores.
If you are following the Organization Challenge than you know that Sunday is our families Planning Day. Every Sunday we get together to plan our family fun day, log our weekly commitments and create our menu. When we’re creating our weekly menu, each family member is responsible for one dinner. They first have to choose what night of the week they want to have that dinner. Then they are given a budget. With supervision, they have to plan the meal and create a shopping list while staying within their budget.
Thursday, which is Errand Day, I take them to the grocery store with me. With their money in their wallets, their lists in hand and their own carts they do their own shopping. I like to let the older ones go off on their own. With the younger ones, we shop together so that I can teach them how to read labels and how to compare prices. When it comes to checking out they are on their own. This allows them to see how well they did or didn’t do with their budgets.
The part that all of my kids love the most, is making the meal. I’m pretty confident in letting the older kids do it on their own, because I’ve been working with them since they were young. The only time that they really need any help is when they are trying something new. As for the younger ones, depending how young they are, I act as an overseer, making sure that they are following the recipe correctly and that they are practicing safety.
Last night, our 15 year old, was responsible for dinner. His menu consisted of breaded pork chops, Parmesan asparagus and cheddar bay biscuits. He did a really good job and it was very yummy. I had to laugh a little though, when he was done cooking, he methodically arranged the food on the plate and was taking pictures of it. I asked him “What are you doing?” and he replied “I thought that it looked good enough to put on your blog”. So today’s post is being brought to you by our son.
I want to warn you ahead of time, my kids are a little competitive. Tonight, our 11 year old is responsible for dinner, so I’m sure that he is going to want to take some pictures of his food and put it on the blog. You may end up seeing pictures from the husband too. LOL
Cooking with kids is a great way to spend quality time together and there are so many life lessons that can be taught through the planning and the cooking of a meal. The best part is that they don’t even realize that they are learning valuable lessons because they are having to much fun creating.
Tell him it looks yummy. Is he ready to cook for all your followers? It is great that they are learning how to,do do much. My older kids did meals when they were that age.
So glad to read this! My late husband and I did something similar with our two daughters, who were home-schooled for our last year in Canada. They did their schooling every morning, and we arranged extra-curricular stuff for the afternoons. The girls were then 16+ and 12- going on 13 at the time, and took it in turns to choose the main meal of the day (which we had mid-day-ish) for a whole week. As you do, they made the shopping lists, (husband and I paid) and if there was an over-spend, then they did not get there half-glass of wine on Sunday lunch time. (We believed in teaching them how to handle alcohol under parental supervision too!) Worked well – on all fronts! both nearly in the 40's now, still shop to a list each week and plan their menus every week while they run their respective households. Cannot recommend the idea enough.
The meal shown looks great – looking forward to seeing the competition!
Isobel