Homemade pizza for quasi-cooking with kids

September 17th is Italian Cuisine Day in Japan. It reminded me that one of my children's favorite dishes for 'quasi-cooking' was homemade pizza. As you can see in the photo, there is rolled out pizza dough which a child is dressing with sauce. The child in this photo was two years of age at the time. 

Homemade pizza is a great dish for fostering children's interest in cooking. When they are really small you can make the dough for them but let them roll it out with a rolling pin. This is something they can do adeptly by three or four years old, but might need some help if they are younger than that.

If you don't want to make the dough from scratch it's also possible to buy ready made pizza base and just let the kids dress it. One thing most children won't need help with is applying the sauce, chesse and toppings of choice. Again, when they are very small you may want to chop up toppings for them. But as they get older they will be able to cut toppings, such as vegetables and ham, by themselves. 

Prepping pizzas for cooking is a really easy and enjoyable way to get young kids interested in cooking. If you don't have facilities to do it in your own home, you can often find pizza making events in the community or at a campsite.  Have you tried it?