Meet our newest featured toddler chef, Bennett! Bennett showed an interest in cooking at an early age and first started cooking with his mom 1 year ago. Now, Bennett is 2.5 years old and has been working on more advanced skills such as whisking and cutting food with a knife!

Bennett has been practicing his knife skills with his mom who is doing an excellent job of first providing hand over hand help and then letting him try it on his own, while also modeling how to cut the chicken (see pictures below). By providing a no stress environment, Bennett is able to freely practice his cutting skills which means chicken slices may end up in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but that is all part of the learning process!

• Providing hand over hand help is a great form of motor learning as you are teaching your toddler the movements required before having them practice on their own.
• Modeling is another great learning technique that activates your toddler’s Mirror Neurons (brain development ) which helps them learn through observation and imitation while completing the same activity.

When cooking with toddlers, remember to teach your toddler knife safety skills, even with toddler knives, in order to establish safety habits early on.