by Rebecca Walton, MS/CCC-SLP
We all know that kids love to help, and that they especially love to help in the kitchen. Here are some ideas for providing lots of models for new vocabulary and to practice following directions while making sugar cookies at home. The best part about it is that your child won’t even realize that they are working on something because they’re having so much fun making cookies!
You can start with mixing the batter and target following directions by having your child give you the ingredient you ask for, or by giving you the utensil that you need. This also works on increasing expressive and receptive vocabulary skills by exposing them to new things including the kitchen utensils and tools and the cookie ingredients.
Examples of directions:
- “Open the refrigerator and get the egg carton.”
- “Get a spoon out of the drawer.”
- “Get the spoon and stir the flour and sugar together.”
- “Take the dough out of the bowl and put it on the counter”
Examples of teaching actions:
- “Open the drawer, package, bag.”
- “Pour the flour in the bowl”
- “Stir the ingredients”
- “Scoop the flour”
- “Roll the dough”
- “Cut the dough”
- “Push the cookie cutter”
- “Spread the icing”
- “Pour the sprinkles”
Examples of the vocabulary you can teach:
- rolling pin
- cookie sheet
Once the cookies are baked, you can have fun decorating them. You can take turns giving directions to your child to decorate them, and they can give directions to you for how they want you to decorate the cookies. This can work on colors, shapes, and following directions again.
“Put some pink icing on the cookie and then put green sprinkles”
“Make a circle with the icing and put the sprinkles inside the circle”