Make baking your kids' pastime

Children get attracted to everything new, and their urge to learn new things is higher. Try engaging them in baking as the activity increases their sense of gratification and perseverance, say experts.

Sana Nair, Founder and Head Chef of the bakery brand The Mellow Yellow Co and Kirti Singh, Founder of Bake Me, India's first ever baking kits for children and beginners, suggests tips on how baking can help your child's mental growth:

* Through baking, they are able to experiment with new flavours as well as learn about new ingredients by taste and smell. What they absolutely love, is decorating and frosting their own dessert, each one creating their own little masterpiece with colours, sprinkles and toppers.

* They can identify shapes and other fun activity through baking. There are various shapes of cookie cutters such as circle, square, triangle, you can let them use it and ask them what shape of cookies they have made. The same can be done for animal cookie cutter and the list is endless.

* Give them piping bags with frosting to write their name on the cake, or let them decorate the cake the way they want to. Let their imagination run wild.

* Through baking, children can learn about colours. Let them experiment what happens when they mix red with yellow, they will get orange colour. It is fun yet it is educational.

* Baking increases perseverance in them. The kids will learn hard work can result in something so yummy and rewarding. Also there will be time when the recipe doesn't turn out to be that great but that too helps a child to learn how to cope with disappointment, and the importance of trying again.

* Sense of gratification that one gets after stimulating kitchen activity will be visible on your child's face. It not only gives them a sense of gratification and achievement, but also helps strengthening the mother-child bond. Of course, not to forget the heaps of applause they'll get from their loved ones who will relish these goodies.

* Baking helps in understanding measurement and volume. Making a cake can teach kids how different amounts of substances (butter, sugar, flour) may weigh the same but have a different volume.

--IANS

nv/rb/bg