When your child is playing in a play kitchen, he or she is doing more than just pretending to cook and clean.  Pretend play offers children the chance to learn important life skills and have fun at the same time.  As a matter of fact, children learn mostly through play for the first four years of life.

One thing that pretend play kitchens help children learn is how to clean after themselves and keep an area organized.  While washing dishes in the play kitchen sink, children are preparing for the time when they will be able to wash real dishes.  By putting everything in place in their play kitchen–from the play food that goes in the refrigerator and pantry to the dishes which often have their own cabinet or slots in a play kitchen–they are learning where everything goes in a real kitchen as well.

Enhance your child’s learning experience

There are things that you can do to help enhance your child’s learning experience.  One thing that you can do is allow them to use water to experiment with measuring and pouring.  If you play with your child in the play kitchen, the conversation that you have with the child can help enhance his or her verbal skills.  You can talk about the different foods, colors, and shapes that you see in the kitchen.  You can also pretend to eat with your child and talk about the tastes of the real foods that the play foods represent.  Talk about what the child likes and dislikes about different foods.

Learning cooperation

When children play with other children in a play kitchen, it can help them to learn cooperation as well.  One child can pretend to wash dishes and another could dry them.  While one child fries an egg in the skillet, another can set the table for “breakfast”.  You can even give the children a small, individually sized box of cereal to pour into a bowl or a little box of cookies to divide among each other on plates.  In this way, the children learn to share and to count out equal amounts of food for each other.  Such activities teach math skills and many other important lessons.

The dramatic play area, which is where the play kitchen in daycare centers or preschools are most often found, is often the favorite area in the classroom.  With the variety of experiences and ways to play that these areas offer, it is no wonder everyone wants to be there.  Because not everyone can go to this area at the same time, having to wait to play in the play kitchen and to move on at a certain point helps your child learn to take turns.  While many parents might not see a play kitchen as an appropriate toy for a boy, both boys and girls are encouraged to play with play kitchens and other dramatic play things in the classroom. This gives them an opportunity to learn that housework can be shared among family members regardless of gender.

As you can see, the activities that children are able to do in a play kitchen help to teach skills that are valuable to them both as children and as they grow up.  The play kitchen may be one of the most important toys that you provide for your child to use during preschool years.