Kitchen vocabulary

Also called Cooking vocabulary, Kitchen set, Cooking words

Cooking, helping, stirring, hot, careful: the words for the room where family life happens, and where a person is most often told to keep out of the way.

What it is

Kitchen vocabulary is the words for what happens in a kitchen: cook, stir, pour, cut, mix, wash up, dry, fridge, oven, pan, spoon, bowl, cup, plate, hot, careful, ready, help, my turn. It is distinct from food and drink vocabulary, which is about eating; this is about making.

The kitchen is where families talk, where children learn by helping, and where a person who uses a board is very often parked at the table with nothing to say while everyone else gets on. The words let them join in.

Who it can help

Anyone who could take part in making food and does not: children learning to help, teenagers learning to cook, adults in supported living who are entitled to more than a microwave meal handed to them, older people who cooked for fifty years and still know how. Cooking is also one of the best repeated, motivating, hands-on contexts for teaching words that anybody has, and speech and language therapists use it constantly for that reason.

The vocabulary will not help a person kept out of the kitchen for safety reasons that were never revisited. "Hot" and "careful" are on the board precisely so that a person can be in the room.

How it works

A kitchen set carries the actions (stir, pour, cut, mix, wash, dry, open, put), the things (pan, bowl, spoon, cup, fridge, oven, tap), the states (hot, cold, ready, full, empty, dirty, clean) and the social words that make helping possible ("my turn", "your turn", "help", "watch", "careful"). Verbs matter most, because the point of a kitchen is doing.

Cooking is a sequence, so time words ("first", "then", "next", "finished") and a simple visual recipe fit naturally alongside. A person who cannot lift a pan can still say "stir" and mean "you stir now".

The Talk board has a kitchen set among its 14, so the room's words are found together, and the food and drink and actions sets sit beside it.

Getting started

This week, cook one thing together with the board on the counter, and narrate on it: "pour" plus "milk", "stir", "hot", "ready". Give the person a real job and a real word for it. "My turn" plus "stir" is a sentence worth waiting for.

Add "careful" and "hot" and use them as warnings, not prohibitions: "hot, careful" as you hand over the spoon, rather than "no, hot" as you take it away.

Wash up together. It is the most repeated activity in the house and it teaches "wet", "dry", "dirty", "clean" and "finished" for free.

Where to get help

Speech and Language UK has family activities built around everyday routines. Communication Matters for AAC vocabulary. Mencap on independence skills for people with a learning disability, including cooking.