Hape Toddler Kitchen set: Pretend Cooking for Children from 18 Months!
A first step into the kitchen at 18 months, full of curiosity, learning and fun!
Children love copying adults, and Mum and Dad are like superheroes who can handle everything quickly and brilliantly. Little ones are happy and excited to watch their parents busy at work, moving around the kitchen between the cupboards and the stove: washing, drying, slicing and chopping colourful ingredients. They watch Mum fill a pot with water and boil spaghetti while warming tomato sauce, bake fish with potatoes and arrange fresh vegetables in a salad bowl! Grown-ups have so much to do!
All that experience helps adults manage these tasks, but it is never too early for children to start exploring, too, especially when they are curious about the world of cooking. They may want to try making a few dishes themselves. All they need is suitable equipment, from a pan and stove for pretend cooking to pizza dough, cookies and meatballs, so they can season and prepare special meals alongside their parents.
Involving little ones in cooking activities is a great way to lay the foundations for a positive relationship with food while encouraging the early development of many skills. Letting children handle food and take part in preparing delicious dishes can also spark an interest in fruit, vegetables, pasta and other ingredients. A toy kitchen is an ideal way to let them start experimenting.
Hape has always valued the world of food. Its Kitchen & Food toy range continues to grow, with appealing toys for children of all ages. Here, we introduce the Hape Toddler Kitchen set, a fun wooden stove with plenty of accessories designed especially for little ones.
What developmental changes happen at 18 months?
Children start wanting more independence in small, everyday activities, such as eating, brushing their teeth and getting dressed. They have usually learned to walk by this point. Many begin running and exploring every corner of the home, including cupboards, tables and appliances. Many also try climbing on furniture, enjoy hiding in small spaces and refuse help when going up and down stairs.
If you are looking for toys suitable for this age, explore more options in our toys for 1-year-olds collection.
At this age, children begin to know more words and express themselves clearly. At the same time, the range of emotions they experience also expands. Anger, frustration, possessiveness, excitement, gratitude, happiness, sadness and love begin to influence their moods. These feelings often emerge as frustration, tears and fussiness, but children this age still need our comfort, cuddles and laughter.
As we know, play serves many important purposes in supporting children's development. It lets them learn and experiment and gives them a way to communicate and express emotions. Pretend cooking encourages creativity and problem-solving while also supporting cognitive development and language skills at this age.
Hape Toddler Kitchen set: For Little Ones Hungry for Fun and Learning
It may look simple, but a toddler kitchen set offers plenty to engage children of this age. Its cute, compact shape and bright colours immediately catch their attention. They cannot resist turning the stove knobs and discovering the surprise: they make a clicking sound! This makes pretend cooking feel even more realistic!
It is a realistic little stove and, importantly, safe for children, with every component undergoing rigorous quality testing. The compact wooden stove is easy to carry for your little one. The frying pan, pot with a lid, spoon and spatula have rounded shapes and smooth surfaces suited to little hands.
All the pieces are large and sturdy, with cute, pot-like shapes that help reduce the risk of children getting hurt or swallowing small parts.
Safety note: Even when toys are designed to be safe for young children, adults should supervise play closely. Choose toys that match the age stated on the packaging, and regularly check for broken or detached small parts that could pose a choking risk (read more from the American Academy of Pediatrics (HealthyChildren.org)).
Create Your Young Masterchef's Own Kitchen
This toy set includes everything needed to pretend to make delicious pasta, healthy soup, an omelette or whatever a little chef's imagination can dream up. You can also add other ingredients if you like. All Hape kitchen sets can be used together, so you can make playtime more realistic and exciting by adding your child's favourite foods. Meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, fruit and vegetables bring extra colour and fun to children's recipes.
For example, the Toddler Fruit Basket is a soft play-food basket with fruit to cut up and turn into a delicious fruit salad, making your junior Masterchef's playtime even more colourful and creative. You will see how much fun it is to watch your child separate cabbage leaves, shell peas and cut carrots and aubergines with a toy knife. To complete their meal with the right amount of carbohydrates, there is also the Toddler Bread Basket, a soft basket of bread. Baguettes, croissants, cake and biscuits are ready to whet little appetites!
This toddler kitchen set is also durable, lightweight and compact, making it ideal for keeping children entertained on trips to visit grandparents or friends. After playtime, children can put the frying pan and pot into the compartment behind the stove. This gives them an opportunity to learn the importance of tidiness and lay the foundations for good habits.
Role-play toys, especially those involving cooking activities, support children's development from 18 months, sometimes even earlier. They offer several key benefits, particularly for children's mental, physical and behavioural development: let's explore the main ones.
- Improve Dexterity and Motor Skills
Grasping, measuring, straining, pouring, adding and positioning all involve the hands and limbs. When cooking, or pretending to cook in a toy kitchen, we carry out many different actions that call on a range of hand skills and tactile experiences. This encourages the development of motor skills.
2. Build a Better Relationship with Food
Through preparing and eating food, children learn to use utensils. A tasty meal is a lovely reward for the effort involved in preparing it. Even with imaginary food, thinking about which ingredients to add and how they go together can stimulate children's appetites, spark curiosity about what is on their plates and encourage them to join their parents at the dining table.
3. Introduce Numbers and Reading Recipes
Preparing food involves following steps and quantities, weighing and measuring ingredients. Children pick up on this by watching their parents read a cookbook or recipe app, where instructions explain how to do something in a clear sequence. All the quantities and times are shown as numbers. This offers a starting point for learning, making pretend cooking a fun way to become familiar with reading, counting and maths.
4. Cooking = Following Rules and Practising Patience
Bread and pizza dough need time to rise. The dough must rest for a while so the yeast can ferment the sugars in the flour, producing the gas that makes it rise. Cheesecake needs time to set in the fridge, and every food has its own cooking time. We cannot rush cooking, and children learn this when they try cooking with you.
5. Rules Matter, but Leave Room for Creativity
Of course, everything we cook has a process, whether we are making meatballs, cake or biscuits. But we can also adapt or swap ingredients freely: chocolate chips or walnuts, white flour or wholemeal flour. Let your child experiment in the kitchen with you. They will enjoy exploring smells and textures and imagining how to make their own treats. This gives them a chance to express their creativity, making cooking even more fun and rewarding!
A child-friendly kitchen set makes a lovely gift that can keep little ones entertained anywhere or let them happily play at cooking while we prepare dinner in the kitchen.
For older children, Hape has also designed other toy kitchens that grow with them, including a kitchen with lights and sounds, full of engaging features for children aged 3 years and up. Find more play inspiration in 3 Fun Cooking Play Ideas for Toddlers.
If you are looking for a great developmental toy, ‘Hape’ is a good choice. We offer a wide variety of wooden toys that support children's development at every age.
Thoughtfully designed around children's learning, these toys help them practise important skills such as looking, listening, observing, fine motor control, problem-solving, imagination and creativity. They also encourage integrated learning across STEAM subjects.
Their designs and materials are strong and durable, with a focus on supporting children's development. Children's safety is also a priority, with non-toxic colours and FSC-controlled wood. Their strength and durability give them a long lifespan and make them environmentally friendly.
These qualities have made Hape a global wooden toy brand, meeting ICTI, CCIB, ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 standards.
It is easy to see how Hape wooden toys can enrich these activities and help keep little ones away from screens.
What matters most is sharing happy moments as a family, because wherever there is love, there is a complete home! What activities do you enjoy with your child? 😁
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