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We love cooking and baking with our kids! The kitchen is a great place to teach skills like measurement and addition while also helping your kids practice reading and learning new vocabulary words!
Today we are going to share 10 Camp Mom Cooking Activities with you!
Camp Mom is something fun we do each summer at our house. We do crafts and activities (indoors and outdoors) with our friends... kinda like our own summer camp. Some of our activities are also tied to children's books. Since this is our fourth year hosting Camp Mom, we have loads of fun resources to share with you.
These 10 ideas that we are sharing are simple and easy and can help you create your own Camp Mom cooking classes in your house this summer!
Pick one activity a week to try or try and do one or two each day. I love how much fun we can have together in the kitchen!
1. Decorate Chef Hats
Start off your Camp Mom cooking classes by decorating your own chef hats. I bought paper chef hats from amazon and then we decorated them with stickers and markers and practiced spelling our names. You could also make homemade chef hats using this DIY chef hat tutorial from Anders Ruff.
2. Yogurt Pops
These are so simple and easy! You can find my quick instructions for yogurt pops here. We make these all year long and use yogurt, juice, and even baby food for the baby! If you want them in cooler shapes try using these Tovolo Rocket Popsicle molds instead of dixie cups.
3. Omelets in a Muffin Tin
Camp Mom can happen during any part of the day. Making muffin tin omelets is such a yummy way to start the day. Kids can choose what they want in their omelets and you can even throw in a little discussion about liquids and solids as you put these together and then bake them.
4. Oreo Asteroids
These ice cream treats were inspired by the book Twinkle, Star of the Week that came in our BabbaBox. You can find the oreo asteroid tutorial here. They are super yummy and kind of addictive. My son's favorite part was crushing the oreos!
5. Banana Boats
Banana boats are a classic camping treat... so perfect for summer. They are also messy, which makes them extra awesome. You can find the instructions to this delicious camp mom treat here.
6. Utensil Hunt
We love going on hunts! Learning the names of the different kitchen utensils is kind of a big deal if you are going to spend time in the kitchen. For this utensil hunt we just created some utensil puzzles with paper and then hid the utensils around our backyard. The kids had to find them and match them! You can read all of the details here.
7. Peanut Butter Boppers
This is a recipe I learned as a young girl! It is simple and delicious, so I had to pass it on. We had fun practicing measuring and counting too. Check out the peanut butter boppers recipe here.
8. Ladle Relays
Water activities are always a hit...especially with cool utensils! Grab a baby pool, a bucket, and some ladles. Fill up the pool and then have your kids fill up their ladles with water and walk across the lawn and dump the water into a bucket. Encourage them to work together as a team to fill up the bucket or give them each their own bucket and see who can fill their bucket up first!
9. Banana Pops
Frozen treats just make summer a little bit sweeter... especially if they are covered in chocolate! Making banana pops is a super fun process with a delicious ending.
10. Bagel Pizzas
Bagel pizzas are a favorite lunch or dinner each week at our house! My four year old can make them almost independently. All you need are bagel halves, tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings! We cover the pizza halves with sauce and cheese, then add toppings, and then cook the pizzas in the oven at 400 degrees until the cheese is melted. Yum!
Once you've made your bagel pizzas you could also try making this pizza collage craft.
While you are eating or waiting for your snacks to cook (or cool), you can check out these books below that we enjoyed reading along with these activities:...
- Banana! by Ed Vere
- Pete's a Pizza by William Steig
- The Lady with the Alligator Purse by Nadine Bernard Westcott
- The Magic School Bus Out Of This World: A Book About Space Rocks
- If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff
- Twinkle, Star of the Week by Paul Nicholls
These are all absolutely fantastic . Essentially any time my kids are asked to cook or do art projects they are INTO IT. A million projects and possibilities. Just hit pinterest with an open mind.
I love all these ideas…and I'm sure my kids would love them too! Pinning!
We posted very similiar things today on our sites… guess we must be aligning ourselves to host the Virtual Book Club for Kids Summer Camp! I love your ideas and am sharing on my Cooking with Kids Pinterest Board! pinterest.com/educatorsspinon/cooking-with-kids/
All of these ideas are so fun. I can't wait to decorate chef's hats and make banana boats. My son loves to help in the kitchen, but I'm not amazing at letting him help. I'm working on it though. These ideas will certainly give him the chance to help me and have fun!
Those are really easy but fun recipes to try out! Pinning this to try out soon.