For babies and pre-talkers:

• • • Talk about what you’re doing, when you do it. Say things like, “Now I’m going to roll the dough out,” or, “Wow! I made a star cookie!”

    • Respond to your child when he makes noises. Imitate the sounds or faces he makes.

For toddlers/preschoolers or early communicators:

• • • Name the ingredients as you put them in the dough.

    • Talk about what your child is doing, when he does it. Say things like, “You are mixing the dough,” or “You put in the sugar.”

    • Practice turn-taking by rolling the dough one person at a time.

    • Add to the words your child says. For example, if she says, “star,” you can say, “A red star,” or “A star cookie.”

    • While decorating the cookies, encourage your child to request the materials he wants, such as the color of icing or sprinkles. Offer two choices, hold them up and say, “Do you want red or green?”

PreK and early elementary:

• • • Practice following directions by reading the recipe to your child and asking her to perform the simple steps. 

    • Play with rhyming words. Challenge your child to think of a word that rhymes with the ingredients you put in the dough or the shape of the cookie cutter you’re using.

    • Play guess the object and have your child guess which ingredient you need or which cookie cutter you want. Describe the object and see if he can guess what you are talking about. For example, “This is something with a hard shell and it is fragile, or breakable.”

    • While decorating the cookies, take turns describing the cookie shapes and make it a game to see how many details you can think of. For example, “I made a reindeer! A reindeer is a kind of animal. It can fly and it pulls Santa’s sleigh. A reindeer has antlers, four legs and a tail. I made my reindeer blue with a red nose.”

    • After the fun is done, encourage your child to tell another adult all about it. Retelling a personal experience is great practice for retelling what she reads and creating her own stories later on.

Later elementary and beyond:

• • • Help your child prepare to make the cookies by reviewing the recipe, checking the pantry/fridge for ingredients needed, and making a grocery list. This is great for practicing executive function skills and future life skills.

    • Have your child practice reading by reading the recipe for you. 

    • Pick out any ingredients that have your child’s target speech sound and ask her to practice the word by itself, then make up a sentence using the word.

    • Make a list of any cooking vocabulary words that your child doesn’t know the meaning of (i.e. sift, cream, level, fold-in). Define or explain the word, if you know the meaning, or look the word up together when you are done baking. Then ask your child to look for the new word in other recipes you cook throughout the week.

    • After the fun is done, encourage your child to make up a fictional story about making cookies. Remind him to come up with a conflict or problem for the story and brainstorm how the characters will try to solve the problem. If he is resistant to writing, have him record the story in a voice recording or video. This will make a great keepsake a few years from now!