By the age of four, your child is beginning to show a lot of independence in the kitchen. Under your supervision, your child can help with food preparation. With a small butter knife or spreader, your child can cut simple, soft items like hard-boiled eggs, bananas, watermelon, strawberries, and cheese. He can also spread his own peanut butter on a cracker or softened butter on toast. Does he love tangerines or bananas? Don’t be surprised if he figures out how to peel them on his own! The more you let him do, the more independent he’ll feel, and the more he’ll want to help.

Play Tips for Food Preparation Skills:

How can you support your child’s development of this Small Muscle Movement and Dexterity skill at this age? It’s as easy as 1-2-3.

1. Let Your Child Help with Meal Prep. Based on his skill level, find opportunities for him to help with mealtime preparation. Let him pick out how many carrots or potatoes are needed for the meal. Give him a measuring cup and a bowl, and ask him to measure out a portion of rice or pasta. Let him slice soft foods, like hard-boiled eggs or avocado, for salad. Teach him how to peel foods safely (always peeling away from his body, with the hand holding the vegetable behind the peeler) and put him to work!
2. Give Your Child a Role in Preparing His Snack. There are many ways your child can help at snack time. He can lay out crackers and cheese slices on a plate. He could fill a bowl with grapes or carrots. If you want to bake a snack, he can help with measuring, mixing, putting muffin cups in the pan, putting cookie dough on the cookie sheet, and more.
3. Make a Drink Station. Teaching your child to pour his own drinks can give him another step towards independence, as well as pride at being trusted to do something for himself where there’s a clear potential for mess. Create the drink station on a flat surface that is easy for your child to reach. Start out with a wide-mouth plastic cup and a small pitcher, filled with just enough water for one drink, as well as a small towel for wiping spills. Demonstrate how to pour the water from the pitcher into the cup and then how to wipe any drips. Then have your drink. It will be important to reinforce that if your child spills, he is responsible for cleaning up. It’s a good idea to start with the small pitcher, but you can also teach him to use a jug with a spigot or the refrigerator if it has a water dispenser.

Developmental Milestones:

Has your baby achieved the following Small Muscle Movement and Dexterity developmental milestones yet? If yes, check off all the skill(s) he has already mastered to date using Playful Bee’s developmental milestones tracker. It’s absolutely FREE and easy to use, just click HERE!

• Pours, cuts with supervision, and mashes own food.
• Feels grown up by helping with housekeeping and self-help tasks.

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Playful Bee

Education Team at Playful Bee

Playful Bee is an e-Preschool that delivers inquiry-based preschool learning from the classroom to your home. Our preschool curriculum was created by our talented team of rock star teachers. With years of hands-on preschool and Kindergarten teaching experience, they've developed a high-quality preschool experience that is convenient-to-use and easy-to-teach by you, grandparents, or your nanny at home.

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