Kitchen Safety For Your Kids

The kitchen is the room in your house where family members are most likely to have an accident. It is therefore important that all your family know about kitchen safety rules. One way to teach your kids about kitchen safety is to get them into the kitchen with you and get them to help you to prepare a meal. In this article we will examine how to teach kitchen safety to your kids effectively. We will look at how to teach them to use a knife, carry hot foods, use fire safety equipment and tell them what to do if they catch themselves on fire or get a small burn. The purpose of the following subject matter is to help encourage an attitude of safe working in the kitchen to your children at an early age.

Get your children to chop up some food with a knife, show them how it is done correctly first. Younger children can be shown this using a blunt ended pair of scissors instead, cutting up ham for example.

Show them how to carry hot foods correctly. They should use an oven glove or a cloth, use both hands and watch where they are putting their feet.

Teach them how to use the fire extinguisher and how to use a fire blanket. Show them where it is kept. Tell them what to do if they catch their clothes or hair on fire. They should drop to the floor and roll over and over until the flames are extinguished and not try to run away from the fire.

Show them what to do if they burn themselves. They should know how to place a burn under running cold water and not try to peel any clothing away from it.

If any family members have a food allergy such as nuts or gluten then explain to your children about food allergies and why it is important to not cross contaminate food. Make a special meal for the family member with the allergy showing the kids what foods must be avoided.

If you prepare a meal with your children along the above guidelines then hopefully they will have learned a lot about kitchen safety and the correct attitude to have about it. You will also get a good idea of their level of ability in using knives, carrying hot food and using the fire safety equipment. This will give you a greater understanding of what kitchen tasks they are actually capable of carrying out safely. If their overall attitude is one of respect for safe working in the kitchen then the exercise can be seen to have been a success.