Spice Up Your Life!

If you are looking for a quick and easy way to entertain your little ones and at the same time have those sense of smell and taste up to work... I suggest you give them this activity or something similar.

This activity is an introduction to spices.  I love to cook and considering that I am Asian, I use a variety of spices in my homecooked meals. Mavi has always been interested in cooking and would ask what's this and what's that.  So one day when we were stuck at home and he was begging me to give him an activity, this is what we did.

I took out all the spices I have in the spice rack and printed my Herbs and Spices Cards which I made early this year so we can do some smelling, tasting and matching activity.

As you can seem, aside from the powdered spices I also presented the real ones (garlic and ginger).  I ran out of cinnamon sticks though.

So all you needed to do is present each spice, how you use it and where you use it. 

Let them have a smell...

  

touch....

 

and a taste.

We kept on laughing at his reactions, whenever he tasted a spice that he doesn't like for example the garlic and ginger.   Then I asked him questions along the way.  How he would describe the cloves, the peppercorns, the cumin etc.

In the end, it was an enjoyable and fun activity for Mavi.  As you know kids always love to taste and touch things, and they are most interested in those stuff that Mommy use!  So it was nice that he gets to explore spices and how it satisfied his curiosity.

Just in case you don't have any of these spices, just use the ones available in your kitchen! It can be salt, sugar, soy sauce or whatever you feel like using.

Try this and have fun!