How to Teach Your Kid To Crack An Egg
Around age two, you can teach your kid how to crack an egg. Of course, every child is different, and some kids are ready earlier than others.
How to Teach Your Kid To Crack An Egg
Written by: Jessica Diamond, MPH, RDN
Around age two, you can teach your kid how to crack an egg. This is a good skill to learn early because it helps develop fine-motor skills and impulse control while building self-esteem and independence.
As with everything in parenting, be prepared and remember that practice makes perfect – or at least good enough! Here’s how to teach your kid to crack an egg:
- Before you start, teach your child that raw eggs are different from cooked eggs and that raw eggs can make you sick. Teach them that they cannot put their hands in their mouth when cracking or cooking with raw eggs. It’s best to teach them this by explaining it while you are cooking with eggs yourself (because they learn so much from watching you!) and by incorporating this principle into play. Make pretend muffins with your child and repeat these lessons out loud so they have had a lot of practice before they try with real eggs.
- Put out a hand towel and two empty bowls, one for the eggs and one for the shells. Always have them crack the eggs into their own bowl so that you can easily fish out any shells without ruining the other ingredients.
- When you’re ready to crack a real egg, have them tap the egg on the counter instead of the bowl (because this reduces the amount of shells that fall into the bowl). Once they can see the crack with their eyes, have them hold the egg over an empty bowl and put their thumbs in the crack and pull the egg apart.
- Have them put the shells in a separate bowl.
- Wash hands!
Here’s a little jingle we like to say that teaches your child how to safely crack an egg.
Tap tap tap
Look for the crack
Put your thumbs in
Pull apart
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