Easy Meals for Kids
As a busy mom with little time, I teach my kids how to take care of themselves which includes making meals. Learning how to make yourself a healthy meal is an important life-skill and my kids know how to make meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks). You can start teaching your kids at a young age to make their own meals. I’m including 5 Easy Meals that Kids Can Make in this post. I taught my children these easy recipes when they were age 5 and both my kids were able to start making themselves meals from that point on!
Although my kids will never make it on the show Master Chef Junior, they started understanding the basics of cooking and baking while learning basic meal preparation. It’s never too early to start teaching your children how to make meals in the kitchen!
I put together these 5 Easy Meals that Kids Can Make by Themselves to encourage children to try making meals on their own.
Easy Meals for Kids
We encourage our kids to help us with meals since they are curious and want to see what they are able to do. Although I don’t allow them to do everything that they ask to try, I’ve learned to not be the helicopter parent and to let them try to make a few meals while I sit back with my glass of wine. Of course, they make a mess but the skills they are learning are far worth a few minutes to wipe the counters and wash a few dishes.
Pizza
This is probably every kid’s favorite meal to make and you can’t mess it up too bad.
Start with a ready-made crust (we like Naan Bread), a jar of tomato sauce, and shredded mozzarella cheese.
Kids can add preferred toppings but our kids like plain cheese pizza.
Warning – spreading the sauce and adding toppings may be a bit messy for beginners so be ready to clean up a mess. Also, be sure they use protective pot holders when placing the item in the oven.
You may want to help them with using the oven!
Here’s a fun Pizza Recipe that kids can make:
DIY Lunchable
It doesn’t get any easier than throwing together some crackers, cheese, and pepperoni.
And what kid doesn’t love the idea of a Lunchable but with the healthier option, they can make themselves?
My kids like to spread their crackers on a plate, fold sandwich cheese into squares (no knife needed!), and add turkey pepperoni to make their own Lunchables!
You can use lunch meat in place of pepperoni and substitute sliced cheese for other spreads (cream cheese, hummus, etc) depending on what your kid’s like and if they want a variety of options.
Here’s a fun Lunchable recipe that kids can make:
Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches
If your kids are asking you to make a PB & J sandwich, show them how easy it is so they can do it!
Once they figure this one out, you are done with packing lunches (haha, if only it were that easy!).
My daughter will make herself a sandwich on the weekend or for a snack but I still handle the lunch packing sandwiches.
We like PB/Nutella and jelly sandwiches in our house 🙂
Here’s a fun Sandwich Recipe that kids can make:
Mac-n-cheese
Mac-n-cheese can be made a variety of ways… there’s boxed mac-n-cheese, the easy microwave bowls, from scratch on the stovetop, etc.
Learning how to make the easy versions are useful but making mac-n-cheese from scratch is a skill that younger generations are missing out on.
For the purpose of teaching my kids a variety of easy ways to make mac-n-cheese, we make mac-n-cheese in a crockpot. You can find the recipe here.
They just throw all the ingredients into the crockpot and they are done!
Here’s a fun Mac-N-Cheese Recipe that kids can make:
Oatmeal
How easy is it to heat some water and add some oats?
Overnight oats are even easier… put some oats and milk in a jar before bedtime and in the morning you have breakfast!
Our kids like to add chocolate chips to their oatmeal for a yummy chocolate breakfast.
This is one essential breakfast that kids should know how to make on their own, other than pouring cold cereal with milk!
We like to boil water on the stovetop and add to our oats but we also taught our kids how to warm their oatmeal in the microwave for an easier method.
Here’s a fun Oatmeal Recipe that kids can make:
Final thoughts about Easy Meals Kids Can Cook Alone
It’s never too early to start teaching your children how to make meals in the kitchen. Start with a few meals that don’t require much use of heat or the stovetop.
Consider using a toaster oven, microwave, or crockpot until they understand how to use a stove/oven. Don’t stress about the mess they will make! As long as you are there to coach and monitor what they are doing, they will have fun and so will you!
Get your kid’s cooking more meals with these recommended cookbooks:
- The Cookbook for Kids
- Cooking Class: 57 fun recipes kids will love to make (and eat!)
- The Disney Princess Cookbook
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