Kids in the Kitchen

Brenda Thompson, in her column Kids in the Kitchen, suggests activities that little ones, beginning at age 1, can perform as mama's helpers in the cooking department.

What she fails to mention is how Discovery Toys Measure Up Cups, fit into your plans. They're a set of twelve cups, with the largest being an 8 oz. measure-- "1 cup" in your recipes. You can teach your child math skills as you measure out your ingredients....a half a cup, will be cup #6, half the size of the #12 cup, and so on. There are also toy Measure Up Pots and Spoons, and Measure Up Balance, a real scale for measuring solid and liquid weights. (Good in Science class, too!)

If you're mixing up a batch of cookie dough, remember to use Place & Trace puzzles, which double as cookie cutters for fun-time dinosaur- and bicycle-shaped cookies.