How Cooking Builds Motor Skills

When it comes to early childhood development, Miss Sue’s takes the lead! Whether it’s arts and crafts or story time, the educational and developmental possibilities are truly endless at our school. As it’s known, one of the most important skills any child can develop at an early age are motor skills. If you’re looking for another fun way for your child to enhance these essential skills, then it’s time to have them help in the kitchen — and here’s why:

Hands On Approach

Just like participating in a modeling clay project at Miss Sue’s during arts and crafts time, cooking fine tunes motor skills within children. From preparing the ingredients to cooking the actual meal itself (with strict supervision and help from a parent/guardian), it will help enhance their motor skills — whilst be entertained, too! One of the best ways to introduce your child to the joys of cooking is to bake cookies. As it’s known, cookies are created from dough — whether that be store-bought or homemade. When you let your child help prepare the cookie dough, they’ll be using a series of hand and eye coordination to get the baking essential ready for the best part: the actual cookies. To start, give your child a ball of cookie dough and a light/durable plastic rolling pin. Next, instruct them to flatten/roll the dough so that it is even and ready for cookies to be cut from it. As your child rolls the dough with the rolling pin, they’ll be using their strength, which enhances their coordination (also known as bilateral coordination). This is truly an essential element in motor skill building — but what exactly does bilateral coordination entail?

Bilateral Coordination

When learning how to cook, your child will not only enhance their overall motor skills, but will also strengthen their bilateral coordination — which falls under the category of gross motor skills (another important category within the realm of motor skills). Just like hand and eye coordination, bilateral coordination is when an individual uses both sides of their body to get a task done. When using rolling pin to flatten out cookie dough, your child is using both hands and arms to get the task done. Bilateral coordination is an essential skill since many day-to-day activities require both sides of the body to exert the action, such as tying shoes and once they get older, driving a car. Cooking not only introduces bilateral coordination, but it also strengthens it over time, making the task effortless for your child. Here at Miss Sue’s, students fine-tune their bilateral coordination through unstructured play, crafts and so much more!

At Miss Sue’s Nursery School, our prime educational goal is the development of the whole child — socially, emotionally, physically and educationally. A multi-sensory, holistic approach to learning is provided through play, art, music and physical activities. To learn more about the school and give your child the best pre-k experience, give us a call at 516-938-0894.