Spring break is here, which can mean a lot of unstructured free time with your kids. Why not lure them into the kitchen with one of our food-inspired activities?

Rather than spending hours staring at the TV or computer (or wandering the house moaning “I’m bored!”), kids can play “chef” and try their hand at making yummy food. After all, the kitchen isn’t just a workstation for family dinners — it can also be the “play station” for fun and creative projects. Read on for entertaining food activity tips from Dr. Anne K. Fishel.

1. Make a Restaurant 

Turn your kitchen over to the kids and ask them to make dinner for you. They may need help finding recipes that are appropriate to their age (Molly Katzen’s Salad People and More Real Recipes or Pretend Soup are excellent resources) and you will likely have to shop for them or with them. But, on their own they can create a menu, and transform the kitchen or dining room into a restaurant.

You can even try having your children play “waiter,” and take your orders and bring the food to the table!

2. Create a Literary Event

Have you ever noticed how many foods are introduced in children’s books? I’m thinking about noodles in Strega Nona, pomegranates in the Greek myth of Persephone, Turkish delight in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, maple syrup on snow in The Little House in the Big Woods, and of course, Green Eggs and Ham. What might Quidditch stew or Mary Poppins’s high teas taste like? You can make foods with your children from some of their favorite books, and then read them aloud while they dig in.

3. Cookie Baking and Decorating

When I ask my 20-something sons about their all-time favorite memories of childhood, baking cookies as a family is at the top of their lists. Over the years, I have collected many recipes for sugar cookies, but this one, from my mother-in-law, is the best.

Sugar Cookie Recipe (from Mary Daly)

2/3 cup unsalted butter

¾ cup sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon grated orange peel

1 egg

4 teaspoons milk

2 cups flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

In a mixer, thoroughly cream the butter, sugar, vanilla and orange peel. Add the egg and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. Stir in the milk. Sift together dry ingredients. Stir these into the creamed mixture, blending well. Divide the dough in half. Put each ball of dough in a piece of floured wax paper and store in the refrigerator for at least an hour, but can be kept for weeks.

When you’re ready, take one dough ball out, warm it briefly in your hands until it is pliable, and then place it on a floured counter. Roll it out so the dough is about 1/8 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters. Some of our favorites are stars, musical notes, moons, dog bones, mother, father and children shapes. Bake cookies on a lightly greased cookie sheet in a 375-degree oven for about 8 minutes. (Watch them!) Cool and then decorate.

Glaze: In little ramekins pour about a half cup of powdered sugar, with a drop or two of milk, and then a different food coloring in each, until you get a consistency that will spread on a cookie. Go very slowly, adding liquid to the sugar. You can also melt chocolate to decorate such things as the base of the tree, the fur of the dog, the horns on the reindeer, or the pants of the father.

4. Turn Your Kitchen into a Chemistry Lab

Kids love to make concoctions from leftover food and safe cleaning products. These unexpected chemical reactions create bubbling, strange aromas and weird, dramatic colors. Just make sure your kids don’t try to eat or drink these brews!

Play dough: Add two cups flour, 1 cup salt, 2 cups water, 4 teaspoons cream of tartar, 2 tablespoons oil and food coloring. Mix and stir constantly over very low heat until a ball forms.

Sugar water for brighter chalk: Add ½ cup water and 2 tablespoons sugar. Dip chalk into the mixture and you’ll find that it is brighter and less smudgy. Try making pictures and hopscotch courts on the sidewalk.

Goop or puffy paint: Add 1 cup of flour, 1 cup salt, 1 cup water, and tempura paints.Mix and place in squeeze bottles. Paint will puff up when dry.

Soap: Use a few bars of glycerin bar soap (available on-line, or at a craft store). Melt the soaps in a microwave or a double boiler. Then add an essential oil with a fragrance you like. Next add a color. You can use natural colors, like cinnamon or orange juice. For added zip, you can add a leaf, a flower or a small plastic trinket. Then pour the mixture into a mold, like a paper cup, or Tupperware container, and wait for it to harden.

5. Explore Mystery Foods

Take your kids to the supermarket and ask them to pick out a fruit or vegetable they’ve never seen before. Years ago, my kids picked out a coconut, and we spent a whole afternoon trying to figure out how to open it. After hammering and chiseling it to no avail, we cleared out the street below and hurled it from a third-floor window.

I recently made a fruit bowl of Hachiya persimmon, bitter melon, banana flower, dragon fruit, June plums and kumquats – none of which I had ever tasted. I then went online to learn about each food and how to prepare it.

Dragon fruit, grown in the warm climates of Southeast Asia, Mexico, Central and South America and Israel, was my favorite. With a spiky red exterior, it has an equally wild interior—it looks like a grey kiwi with little black seeds. You can eat the inside flesh on its own, or use it in frozen blended drink to give your smoothie a pear-like flavor.

6. Make Crazy Pretzels

These are inspired by the hot, doughy pretzels that are sold from pushcarts in New York City. Feel free to go crazy, making these into whatever shape you want.

Crazy Pretzel Recipe

1 package yeast

1 1/2 cups warm water

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

4 cups flour

1 egg beaten

Kosher salt

Pour the warm water into a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle on the yeast and stir. Add the salt, sugar and flour. Mix and knead the dough. Give each child a small ball of dough to roll and twist into letters, numbers, animals or shapes without names.

Grease a cookie sheet and place the pretzels on the sheets. Brush the pretzels with the beaten egg and sprinkle with salt. Bake at 425 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

7. Play with Color and Taste

Ask your kids to think up a “one color” menu, and then help them make it. Or, ask your kids to think up a menu that has all five tastes (bitter, sweet, sour, salty and umami), and create a “taste-fully” balanced meal.

If you’re looking for even more recipes, try our dirt dessert (don’t worry, it’s just Oreos, pretzels, and gummi worms), a scrumptious baked good called Monkey Bread, or our delicious, easy-to-make hummus.

8. Food Coloring Magic

When my sons were young, I used to assemble two eyedroppers, several small dishes filled with water and different food colorings, and a pile of paper towels. Then, they folded the paper towels into squares or a tight pile, and applied drops of different colors. When the towels were unfolded, the patterns surprised and delighted us. We hung them up to dry on clotheslines strung around the kitchen. It was like stepping into a psychedelic Rorschach.

9. Scent-guessing

Each person rounds up 3 things from the bathroom or the kitchen, and puts each item in a plastic cup. For example, you might squeeze a little toothpaste, pluck a mint leaf, or scrape some carrot shavings. The other people are blindfolded and have to guess what’s in the containers by sniffing them. Whoever guesses the most correctly wins and gets to chose the dessert for dinner, which in turn keeps everyone in the kitchen a while longer for baking.

Once you launch your kids in these kitchen-based activities, solitary screen time may look much less appetizing.  And there’s no reason to confine these activities to the spring break. Your kids will likely want to “unplug” during other times of the year, preferring (at least some of the time) to play with food rather than video games.