One of the biggest parts of celebrating the holidays with your family is cooking, and if you can come up with some easy Christmas recipes for kids you could keep them entertained for an afternoon, instead of them being parked in front of the TV or a computer.
Don’t forget that one of the most enjoyable activities is to get in the kitchen with Christmas recipes for making cookies with the kids. The dough is simply a mixture of a few basic ingredients. The best part after rolling out the dough is cutting it into Christmas shapes such as Santa, Christmas trees, or different shaped decorations, and then making icing and adding sparkles after they are baked.
It’s a good idea to have the children wear aprons if you have them because once they start messing with the flour and the dyes that color the icing you know there is going to be one enormous mess. Christmas recipes for kids in books and magazines always fail to mention the mess you’ll have to clean up after, but it’s always a lot of fun.
Gingerbread people are great things to make too, especially piping on their clothing and using candy for their faces, it’s such a temptation to the kids to eat half of the decorations while you’re baking – so make sure you buy lots. All that sugar will also make them hyperactive, and they’ll want to eat the gingerbread people as soon as they come out of the oven, so be prepared!
Gather up some Christmas recipes for kids and some special Christmas cookie cutters and offer to look after a friend’s kids whilst she goes Christmas shopping. Hopefully she will return the favor so she can clean up the mess in her kitchen next time, and you can have a day shopping without the kids dragging along.
If your kids are a little older, or you have a lot of kids over for the day, among the many Christmas recipes for kids you will probably find an easy recipe for Christmas cakes. You could split the kids into teams and have each team bake and decorate one each. Let Dad or someone else be an impartial judge once the cakes are finished.
Just make sure that all the children understand the safety aspect of being around a hot oven, and if you can get them to clean up after themselves that will be a bonus. Whatever happens, teaching children the basics of cooking is always a good idea. Don’t just buy a box of cake mix, if you want to keep them occupied for more than a few minutes then plan which Christmas recipes for kids might keep them occupied for an hour or two, but I didn’t say it would keep them quiet!