The warm weather has meant the bananas in our fruit bowl have gone brown faster than we can eat them, so last week my son decided to make banana bread with the ‘bad’ bananas.
As a speech, language and feeding therapist, I frequently talk with families about ways they can turn baking together into communication and mealtime learning. Time spent in the kitchen with your child provides endless opportunities to practise communication and mealtime skills.
Speech and Language Learning through Baking
Learning becomes more meaningful when it happens in the real world, and the kitchen is a fantastic place to build on your child’s speech and language skills. You might be surprised at all the communication skills you can target while baking together.
- Vocabulary – Baking together naturally exposes your child to new words such as recipe, measure, scales, weigh, etc.
- Basic Concepts – Time in the kitchen provides opportunities to introduce basic concepts including: hot/cold; full/empty; dirty/clean; wet/dry; big/little; heavy/light; shiny/dull; first/next/last; and more.
- Verbs – Baking action words such as stir, whisk, pour, heat, bake, etc. can be practised throughout your baking activity in present, past and future tense forms.
- Following Directions – Baking is a multi-step activity and you can use time in the kitchen to support your child’s ability to follow one-, two- and multi-step directions.
- Let’s get an egg.
- Get an egg and crack it in the bowl.
- Get an egg and crack it in the bowl, then pour the sugar in the bowl.
- Understanding and Answering Questions
- Who baked the bread?
- Where is the recipe?
- What did you use to mix the ingredients?
- When do we turn on the oven?
- How many bananas did we peel?
- How did we mash the bananas?
- Speech Sounds – Practise sounds your child has not yet mastered while baking.
- /t/ – table, butter, salt
- /g/ – get, sugar, egg
- /s/ – salt, recipe, eggs
- /l/ – loaf, yellow, peel
- /r/ – ripe, apron, sugar
- Narrative Skills – Using narrative refers to a child’s ability to tell about a sequence of events in the correct order with a clear beginning, middle and end. When you finish baking, have your child re-tell you the story of what you did in the kitchen together.
- Executive Functioning – baking is a multi-step process that requires higher level thinking and communication skills including organisation, cognitive flexibility, working memory, attention, and planning.
Mealtime Learning Through Baking
For children who enjoy eating as well as for those who struggle with eating or are ‘picky eaters,’ time around food in a no pressure environment, such as baking, supports the development of skills needed to manage food at the table.
To help your child build positive food connections, when baking together focus on:
- Sensory Exploration – Encourage your child to smell, touch, and look at the food without pressure to it eat. Use vocabulary such as soft, crunchy, firm, and colour words to describe what you feel and see.
- Being Okay with Food Mess – baking and eating are messy at times. Practise with food on hands and clothes while baking helps children to be comfortable with food mess while eating.
- Food Choices – ask your child to decide what ingredient to add next and let them measure, peel, pour and stir while baking together. Give your child the choice of adding walnuts or chocolate chips to the recipe for added flavour. The more food interactions, the better!
- Enjoying Time Together around Food – Part of building positive food connections is enjoying time around food. When your child has fun baking with you, that supports their development of a positive association with food. Be silly, smile and laugh together while you create your tasty treat.
Banana Bread Recipe
Ingredients:
- 225g sugar
- 90g butter
- 3 over ripe bananas
- 2 eggs
- 170g plain flour
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- chocolate chips or walnuts (optional)
Directions:
- Heat the oven to 180° and line a loaf tin with parchment paper
- Cream together the butter and sugar
- Add 2 well beaten eggs
- Mash 3 bananas and add to the mixture
- Add flour, salt and baking soda
- Bake uncovered for 15 minutes then cover with aluminium foil, and bake for a further 20 minutes
- Let cool before cutting
Enjoy!
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