I was surprised to learn from a recent study of 2000 British parents that a massive 88% avoid cooking with their children, with the mindset of avoiding mess. For me encouraging your children to cook is very important otherwise they are missing out.

Persil is currently championing a great campaign 'Cook with the kids promise', the aim to encourage parents to spend more time with their children in the kitchen, cooking and embracing the mess. Now I am a messy cooker, I admit it, my hubby jokes about it, so I don't mind when the kids want to join in and help as I am probably messier then the kids are! Jacob often pulls his chair into the kitchen so he can help with chopping, or the mixing etc. Sometimes Liam will make his brothers and himself breakfast or lunch, Lewis is the same and they always leave a mess - but this is easily cleaned up. Having fun, enjoying it, let the mess happen and clean up after. It really is worth it, the children gain so much out of it.

Last week we headed to the OXO Tower on London's South Bank to the Persil's Cook with the Kids Workshop and Food-fight. The aim of the day was for the children to cook, make a mess, and finish off with a big food-fight.  The boys were really looking forward to it, especially Jacob and the food-fight, Lewis was looking forward to the cooking.

We started off with making Pizza.  First we watched a live demonstrate on how to make the pizza dough. The boys then got mixing, creating and made a pizza each.

Whilst the pizza's went off to be cooked, we were then given cupcakes to decorate with all sorts of sweets and toppings, the boys created each a cupcake and they were rather pleased with themselves.

After the boys had eaten their pizza and cupcakes, we started to get ready for the anticipated event of the day, the food-fight. Jacob and Lewis suited up, and put on the goggles, unfortunately Jacob got in a frap with his goggles, couldn't get comfortable with them, got himself upset, and pulled out of the food-fight, he was so disappointed with himself, but we watched the other children and you can see below it was quite a mess they created, with lots of fun and laughter.

So why not clean all the mess with the new look, new formula Persil -  Persil's new improved formula which can clean 1400 more dirty dishes than previously! It also comes in a new look bottle designed with the environment in mind, it is lighter weight bottle, leaving less packaging and less waste.

The new and improved Persil comes in 6 different options:

Apple Fizz

Fresh Mint

Lemon Burst

Orange Crush

Pink Blush

Spring Blossom

Would you like to get involved and support the campaign? Then please sign up to the Cook with the kids promise on the Persil website and once you have made the promise, you can download a PDF pack of fun activities for the kids to do, you are also entered into a competition to win a kids friendly baking kit and an ultimate children's party worth £500.