Things a toddler can do while you cook

Why the cooking hour is hard

Late afternoon is when small children are tired, hungry and least able to play alone, and it is exactly when you need twenty minutes at the stovetop. Sending them to another room rarely works because what they want is to be near you. The approach that tends to work is the opposite: keep them in the kitchen, down at floor level, with something to do that feels like part of the cooking.

The one rule that makes this safe is to set everything up before the heat goes on. Once you are stirring, you cannot also be fetching a tray.

Floor-level jobs

Open the low cabinet with the pots in it and hand over a wooden spoon. Bowls, pans, a whisk, a low table or a tray to bang on. It is loud and it lasts. A few plastic containers with lids to match up and stack keeps a two year old busy on the floor beside you, and a set of measuring cups to nest inside each other does the same for a younger one. Put a muffin tin down with a bowl of large pom-poms and they will fill each hole and tip it out again.

If the noise is too much at the end of a long day, swap the pots for the containers and the spoon for the pom-poms.

Real jobs they can own

Children this age want to help, and dinner time is full of small jobs that can be handed over. Let them unpack the soft or boxed things from the shopping bag onto the floor. Give them their own water bottle and a small jug to fill it from, on a towel. A stack of napkins to carry to the table, one at a time, or two spoons from the drawer to put by the plates. A spoon and two bowls with a handful of dry cereal to transfer keeps them at the table while you plate up.

None of these jobs need doing well. They need doing slowly, which is the point.

Making it a routine

Pick two of these and do the same two every evening for a week. A child who knows that cooking time means the pots come out will go to the cabinet themselves, and that is when it starts to give you the twenty minutes back. The activities below each have their own page with steps and a switch-up. All of them happen within arm's reach of the stove without going near it.

Try this together

Pots And Pans Band from 14 months · 25-40 min Lid Match Stack from 20 months · 5-10 min Cup Nesting from 16 months · 5-10 min Muffin Tin Sort from 18 months · 5-10 min Unpack The Shopping from 14 months · 20-30 min Water Bottle Fill Help from 16 months · 5-10 min Set the Napkins from 20 months · 5-10 min Spoon Transfer from 18 months · 5-10 min

More play guides

Rainy day activities for toddlers at home Pick one big-movement idea and one sit-down idea. That covers most of a wet afternoon. Screen-free activities for 2 year olds At two, the best screen-free activities are real jobs: pouring, sorting, carrying, stirring. Things to do with an 18 month old at home At 18 months they want to carry, post, tip out and put back. Give them jobs that are exactly that.