In the midst of this global pandemic, many parents find themselves juggling even more roles than usual. Not only are we maintaining our usual housekeeping and child-rearing duties, but we’re also learning how to work from the house while also homeschooling our children. By the time you factor in all of the extra messes in the house and additional food to prepare and it’s enough for even the most put-together mom to lose her mind.

Believe it or not, though, now is the perfect time to start involving your kids in your daily household responsibilities! Chores not only teach children responsibility and life skills, but they provide a great bonding opportunity for the family. If you’re looking for a way to start helping your child be more involved in household activities, consider these five ways to get kids to help out in the kitchen from the Tupperware Culinary Team.

1. Plan Meals as a Family

Kids who help with food planning and preparation are often more likely to eat the meals you cook up. So why not start the week off by planning out a menu for each day? You can even take this a step further and involve the kids in the list-making and grocery shopping process (even if you’re just using grocery delivery or curbside pickup).

If you use a meal delivery service like Blue Apron or Hello Fresh, you can all sit down together at the computer and select meals for the upcoming weeks. This lets children see ingredient lists and see sample images of what the meal will look like once it’s all prepared, which can be highly beneficial if you have an extremely picky eater.

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2. Let Kids Participate In Cooking

Studies show that children love helping parents out, and there are many ways to put them to work while preparing a meal. Kids can help gather ingredients, measure them out, and even help with vegetable chopping if you use tools like Tupperware’s Power Chef food processor.

What’s more, this type of participation can provide the opportunity to apply skills your child is learning in school to real-life situations. Cooking involves reading, measuring, time keeping, and more — which makes it the perfect homeschool activity!

3. Use Kitchen Scraps for Other Projects

Who says that the fun with food ends when the meal goes into the oven? Believe it or not, there are actually lots of ways to use leftovers and kitchen scraps in new, innovative ways. You can start a backyard compost and use it to maintain a home vegetable garden. If your kids are more into arts and crafts, you can find creative ways like this DIY Pudding Dough to use up food or pantry items.

4. Have Kids Clean Up

As most moms know, one of the most exhausting parts of meal preparation is dealing with all the dirty dishes once the meal is done. However, dish duty is a great job for elementary and middle school aged kids. Whether you make it a mandatory activity or use it as an incentive for screen time or an allowance, clean up duty can help kids learn their way around the kitchen and see how much work cooking actually is.

5. Check Out New Recipes

In addition to these other great ideas, you can also get your kids involved in the kitchen by sitting down and finding new recipes with them. You can check out some YouTube channels or watch shows like Chopped or Nailed It! for inspiration, or put their literary skills to the test by dusting off some old cookbooks you haven’t opened in ages. In fact, this can be a great way for kids to find new favorite dishes and expand your family’s typical weekly menu.

Whether your kids are five-year-olds or even pre-teens, now is the perfect time to start involving them in all of your day-to-day household tasks. While they may not be budding contestants for Chopped or Iron Chef, you may discover that your kids enjoy showing off their culinary talents more than any of you ever realized.

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