Creating a kid friendly kitchen…

As I’m working on decluttering, one of the tasks I’ve set myself to do is create a kid friendly kitchen.

Part of the Montessori philosophy is creating an environment for children that is conducive to self-help skills, and they can’t help themselves in the kitchen if all their things are up and off limits. Now, granted, my kids are aged 3, almost 5 and 6.5, so it may not be safe to keep certain things within reach of little bitty kids.

In the pantry, the kids have part of a shelf devoted to their cereals and their snacks. The containers for the cereal and snacks are easy open containers and they can help themselves quite easily.

And then I have a pullout shelf for their cups, bowls and plates. The cereal bowls and plates are Corelle’s Winter White collection. Corelle is fairly sturdy yet lightweight, and those little mugs are from walmart and they were originally meant to be salt and pepper shakers but I just removed the lid and they make nice mugs. There are two Curious George glasses that were jelly jars once upon a time. I really regret not getting more when I had the chance to.

Closeup of the glasses:

The little mugs are perfect for tiny hands. And they are rather thick glass. I have not had one break yet.

Here are a few of the snack sized bowls I have for the children. Yes, they are also glass, but I have taught them to use them only at the dining room table, and since they are a bit older, it seems to be working out well. If they want snacks outside, I have taken to using plastic snack bags because I’ve had a few of the clear glass ones break on the concrete outside.

The first was a small flower like bowl from Target, the clear glass can be found almost anywhere (Target has them, and even the dollar store has similar kinds, though not quite as thick as the ones from Target), and the small (about 3 inch, I think) ramekins I think I got from a discount store called Tuesday Morning. The small ramekins are excellent for little dips. And for color mixing with food coloring and water.

And this afternoon, I made a spot for them:

It worked out rather well. My almost 5 year old was able to get her own snack this afternoon because everything was in reach.

To get to the fruit and the two containers of nuts in the back, we have a little stool for them to pull up to it. They’ve been able to get their own fruit for a while now. I even have a little vegetable brush for them to use to wash their own fruit by the sink.