Cooking is a great hands-on learning for kids at home.

There are a lot of opportunity for kids to grow up in kitchen.

Cooking is one of the great hands-on learnings for kids that involves with all five senses.
The feeling of accomplishment by cooking the meal by themselves leads to pride and self-esteem of kids.
They will learn how the cooks feel when cooking for others and will learn the joy that the others eat the food they cook. This helps acquire the sense of thinking on others’ side. They experience being grateful by others.

Let kids cook and have those great experiences!

What an adult should do for this

We think adults should believe in kids and leave it to them while cooking as much as they can in order for kids to get the sense of accomplishment.
It looks like using kitchen knife is too dangerous for kids. But from our experiences, kids tend to listen well and follow the rule if adults tell them how to use the knife and tools.

It is also a good chance for kids to arouse the feeling of pride to manage a sharp knife.

It is also important to prepare and organize the good environment for kids to cook.

Place wet towel or a piece of cloth under cutting board to avoid slipping.

Let kids to stand on the stable step to adjust the proper height of cutting table.

Give kids a sharp knife for their first time.

The sharpness of the kid’s knife is important because they have less force for cutting than adults.

When they cannot cut the food well just because of dull kitchen knife, they don’t know the knife is bad but instead, they think it is a fault of them.
It is not good for their sense of accomplishment and pride. Providing proper size and functional knife and tools is very important and what we adults can do for them.

SUNCRAFT kid’s knife from the series “Daidokoro Ikuji (Kid’s rearing at Kitchen)” is sharp as good as the knife we make for adults.
Without unnecessary force that is needed when using a dull knife and could lead to hurting themselves sometimes, kids can cut food naturally and smoothly with our kid’s knife. The knife has lots of design points that help kids use the knife well.

Relatively short handle so a small hand holds the knife properly

When kids use kitchen knife for the first time, they tend to hold the knife at the bottom of the handle because they are scared. It is difficult to control the knife when holding it too far from the cutting knife blade. Our knife is bit shorter handle so that kids hold the knife not too far from the knife blade.
When kids try to grab the handle to cover two red dots on the handle, they can hold the knife at proper position of the handle.

Knife blade edge keeps straight from the heel to the tip.

Because kids’ wrist joint is still developing, it is difficult for kids to move the knife at wrist like an adult chopping motion.
They still need to hold the wrist joint and move the arm in order to cut food.
So the straight knife blade edge helps kids cut food without leaving uncut material.
The blade height is bit higher so that kids can always recognize the blade from cut food while cutting. A small petty knife would be hidden among cut food and the blade cannot be seen.

By differing slightly the blade edge angle, we produce kids’ knives both for right-handed and left-handed.

Ms. Hiroko Sakamoto, a pioneer of kid’s cooking class in Japan

“Daidokoro Ikuji (Rearing kids at Kitchen) had been created together with Ms. Sakamoto who run cooking classes for kids. From her long experience to teach kids how to cook, SUNCRAFT kid’s cooking knife and tools are all developed functional and useful for kids.

Ms. Hiroko Sakamoto.
Kid’s cooking class teacher, Cooking expert.
Founder of Sakamoto kitchen studio (cooking class for kids in Kobe). The pioneer of kid’s cooking and hands-on learning at kitchen.

Kid’s cooking class at Sakamoto kitchen studio

Kid’s feeling of accomplishment and pride, that is our goal.

Since the launch of the series in 1993, our kid’s knives and tools have helped lots of kids carry out cooking at home or cooking class. Those are appreciated as good gift at special occasion for kids.
The series has been renewed in 2021. SUNCRAFT would love to keep helping more kids cook with fun and experience a great opportunity for their growth.