Language Development in a Natural Environment - The Kitchen

Introducing Andi Leubitz and her fantastic blog Momasutra

Andi's blog provides readers with real life situations.  She journals her experience as a Mother living in Israel.  One of her friends actually made her a deserving supermom cape. This current blog gives endless opportunities for language and self confidence development in the kitchen.  Andi's children are incredibly lucky to have her as their Mother. http://momasutra.com/2012/02/life-values-from-the-kitchen/

Like many families, ours revolves around the kitchen table. Anything and everything happens at the kitchen table: breakfast and dinner together, of course, homework, telephone calls to family, serious talks with the kids, beef dip Thursday, the highlight of our week, and of course, all our food prep.

When my sister, Cyndi, and I were little, our favorite time of year was when Bubby and Zaidy came to visit. They flew all the way from Ohio to Pennsylvania to stay with us for a week or two at a time.

They were world-travellers and always brought us the most incredible gifts. But, more than the gifts are the memories they gave us. We played the money game (where Zaidy asked us simply school-related questions and we got a dollar for each one we answered right), the Creepy-Peepy (where Bubby presented to be a monster under the covers) and our favorite, “Restaurant.”

Restaurant was when Bubby cooked breakfast before Mom woke up and made us a special menu of food only she made- bird in the nest and hot chocolate. (Side Note: Powdered Hot Chocolate was banned in our home because of the mess we made when we prepared it with Bubby, so Bubby had to hide this in her purse and bring it from Ohio. Basically, she smuggled it in.)

Helping Bubby in the kitchen was the best part- one of us was the customer and the other was the waitress. The waitress took the orders and the customer told the waitress what she wanted (of course, the options on this menu were extremely limited).

Those memories were incredible- Cyndi and I still talk about those days.

Now, in my kitchen, there are certain values and traits I am teaching my own children.

1. The kids have their favorite jobs- cracking eggs, scooping out cups of flour, gathering supplies from the cabinet. And then, there are some jobs they don’t appreciate as much- taking out the compost bin, washing the dishes, cleaning up the counters after themselves. But by providing them with the fun and the hard work simultaneously and in conjunction with each other, they can see that you can be productive, and then clean up after whatever mess you make. With fun comes hard work and with hard work comes fun.

2. The kids can appreciate considering others- others tastes, others preferences, others skills and styles of cooking.

3. The kids, especially with the game of restaurant that we still play, discover what it means to serve others, support others. The good feeling you get from helping others, even if simply by preparing good food for them. We don’t only cook in the kitchen, we crank up the music and we dance too. This helps the kids appreciate each other too.

4. The kids have seen recipes that have worked perfectly and recipes that have simply flopped because the recipe was not well planned, or we forgot a key ingredient. We have learned to laugh over burned popcorn and start again. The nice thing about the kitchen is you can always start over if you have all the ingredients.

The Kitchen is a great place to learn about life values and how to have fun. It gives us the full perspective of life- from homework to making meals together as a family to watching each other practice their zumba moves. It certainly is the cornerstone of our home.