Cooking with kids may need some extra time to organize everything or extra energy and patience to handle anything in the kitchen, but boy, does it bring a lot of benefits to the little helpers’ development!
You can start with simple recipes, like salads, fried eggs, and pancakes to introduce the child to the cooking universe. The more familiarized the children are with the ingredients, the crockery, the hot surfaces, the sharp utensils the lesser the risk of anything going wrong in the process.

So set your mind to doing this because you are about to endow your kids with an unbelievably valuable pack of skills they can use for the rest of their lives: 
Children develop fine motor skills by handling things with care around the kitchen: by holding and not squeezing, by patting and not hitting, by pouring without spilling and so on.
Children enrich their vocabulary only by getting to know the ingredients while using them: fruits, vegetables, spices and herbs, types of meat and flour, pasta, oils and so on, by using the tools needed for cooking and by speaking the terms of the cooking language.
They become functional readers and practice some math, too, while learning to cook by written recipes, following directions, and measuring ingredients. This will also enhance their attention span, develop their attention for details and the interest of pursuing an action to its outcome. That is: to finish something they started. 

They get keen on good nutrition, growing up with the idea that a good meal is a cooked one, not a semi-processed one thrown in the shopping cart at the supermarket and heated in the microwave oven at home. It is very important for children to form a positive experience with produce and fresh food since early years because this is the foundation for the nutrition choices they will make later in life.
And maybe the most important thing of all: cooking with kids means family time, spending quality time together, connecting with the little ones and creating more wonderful childhood memories.

 
Foto Credit: Tanaphong Toochinda, Unsplash.