In our home everybody helps out in preparing a meal everyday.  But we also ask the older girls to prepare the whole meal from beginning to the end.  A team of 2 girls would have to discuss, plan, wash, cut and cook a meal for the whole family (usually at lunchtime).  This is the basic homemaking skills that everybody (especially a girl) should learn.  Sadly, almost no public school nor private school provides this type of training to the students.  Only under the homeschooling environment would a young child be taught these important lifelong skills.  There are the skills that our girls would learn through the simple act of cooking:

1. Teamwork: who gets to clean and cook what
2. Planning: what is the menu for the meal?  Is there enough food for everybody?
3. Following instruction: how to follow the recipe and put the math skills into use when it needs to double or triple the ingredients.
4. Creativity: when there is no recipe to follow, how to best use the food on hand?  Afterall, why not create your own recipe?
5. Cleanup:  cooking is fun, but cleanup is also important. 

Most of the young girls these days don't even know how to cook for themselves, let alone preparing a nutritious meal for the whole family.  By teaching your children at a young age, you are essentially preparing them to be responsible and caring mothers in the future.

Sonia and Viviana's turn to cook.
A pot of vegetables, entirely prepared by Sonia and Viviana.
Salad bowl.
Cutting sweet potatoes.