Ready to hand off the reins in the kitchen and teach your kids to prepare a meal? Screen-free Summer Life Skills Bingo has got you covered, courtesy of Alicia at Sweeping up Joy. 

My kids are 9, 7, 4 and 2, and ev’body loooooooooves helping in the kitchen.  Two of our favorite shows are Masterchef Junior and  The Great British Baking Show, so it’s no surprise that my little foodies jumped at the chance to spearhead a simple meal as part of the Screen Free Summer Life-Skills series.

Teach Your Kids to Prepare a Meal

Prepare

Given the elaborate meals they’ve seen prepared on Masterchef Junior, I was nervous I’d have to shoot down suggestions of Duck Confit or Beef Wellington.  Maybe it’s because I introduced the concept as preparing a simple meal that they settled on cheesy scrambled eggs.  Or maybe it had more to do with the combination of the limited contents of our fridge/pantry and the desire to eat soon.  (Welcome to real life meal planning, kiddos.)

Divide Up Jobs

This is perhaps the most challenging step in our house because it’s a universal kid truth that all the other jobs look infinitely more fun than yours.

Elle grated the cheese (headlamp optional).

Moe cracked the eggs.

Bea beat the eggs.  (Why, yes, she is wearing three shirts simultaneously, only one of which belongs to her.  Since I was occupied taking pictures of the cooking magic, Bea did a little fashion experimentation using the clean, folded laundry on the couch.)

At one point the plate of grated cheese got a little too close to the edge of the table.  (There are some accidents even a headlamp can’t prevent.)  Fortunately, it landed cheese-side up.

Moe the little vacuum gladly helped clean up the floor cheese.

By this time Bea the fashionista wanted all the cooking turns ever, so Elle forfeited her next round of helping to keep Bea busy.  That meant Moe also was able to stir the eggs and sprinkle non-floor cheese on top.

Focus on the Process

So often when doing real-world activities with the kids, I get frustrated.  They aren’t as efficient as me at anything (imagine that, since none of them have even hit double digits), and I get impatient and frustrated at having to wait or coach them through something that would take me a fraction of the time.  But I need to remind myself that it’s not actually about the cheesy eggs here.  It’s about giving my kids the skills and confidence they need to be functioning adults.  Which meant I couldn’t get irritated with the floor cheese.

Enjoy!

We didn’t bother with sides or dessert because the kids were hungry.

Another satisfied customer.

Now that we’ve mastered scrambled eggs, next we’ll tackle Taco Glump.

We eat it about every other week, so if they “cultivate Taco Glump life-skills,” ultimately I’ll gain a bunch of free time in the long run.

To me, that’s what this series is all about—working myself out of a job, one skill at a time.

Alicia blogs at Sweeping Up Joy about finding beauty and humor in life right now– even when it’s hidden behind piles of laundry and chewed up books.