Food Activities
Cereal Acorn!
I bought these oats to make a hearty breakfast for my son before preschool, somehow they ended up as a craft before I ever made him breakfast! I love exploring textures and using unusual materials for art. We don’t have a lot of oak trees around here but I know lawns all over are filling up with them as the colder days of fall are upon us. This craft is easy but takes a long time to dry , so find a sunny window sill to sit it on for a day before shaking off the extra.
- Gather your materials. You will need some heavy paper ( we used a brown grocery bag) , glue, oats, chocolate cereal, brown marker, and scissors.
- Start by drawing an acorn on the paper bag.
- Have your child color this if they want. Even though we are covering it with glue I like doing this step so that if they only add a little of the cereal it’s still decorated.
- Add your glue- you will need a ton so now is a great time to let your little one loose with the glue. If you end up with huge puddles just spread them around.
- Add the oats. We just poured, my floor survived amazingly.
- Add the chocolate cereal.
- Eat a few….
- Gently shake off the excess. Tip if you use a flexible plastic place mat you can gently shake a little off and then fold and pour into bowl, garbage , where ever!
- Let dry… for a long long time…. about 12 hours.
- Cut out when dry.
Books
A Friend for all Seasons by Julia Hubery is a gem! The book explains the change of seasons in a fun and easy to understand way for young children. Readers follow along with Robbie Raccoon as he notices the changes that are happening around his home, a big oak tree. My favorite part of this book was when Robbie and a few woodland friends notice that the tree’s leaves are falling and they assume he is crying, so they give him a hug. I loved that! Robbie’s mama raccoon explains the changes and before they go to sleep for a long time during winter’s dark days, they plant 5 acorns . This was a fun part of the book because I had my son predict what would happen. I liked that it gives parents an opportunity to extend this into a science lesson about seeds, and a oak tree’s life cycle. Sure enough when Spring comes there are tiny baby oaks waiting for Robbie when he awakens. I loved this book and would recomend it happily!
When Autumn Falls by Kelli Nidey is a stunning book, the illustrations which are painted paper collages, by Susan Swan are so richly colored you will want more after turning the last page. The text is clever as well. Readers will discover that fall is well named not just because of falling leaves, but also pumpkins falling from the vines, temperatures falling, seeds falling from their leaves and even football players falling! The text is the perfect length for toddlers but not too short for preschoolers too. Cute book for this time of year.
Apple Cider Making Days by Ann Purnell kinda surprised me, I don’t know what I was expecting but I loved this book. My son was sold on the tractor in it but I really liked how simply the author explained the whole process of making apple cider. From picking the apples on Grandpa’s farm to sorting out the good ones to sell and the bad ones to press, to selling it it covers the details without being too much for a young child to process. I loved that the whole family, aunts, uncles, cousins and more helped , seeing a family work side by side is heartwarming. My son loved the tractor but also the conveyor belt that took the apples to press! The illustrations by Joanne Friar set the happy autumn tone for the book and I particularly liked the small details like the pumpkins and squash for sale at the farm. No bad reviews today- all three books are worth a look !
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Fun with Food
By creating a chart with the four food groups, I was able to highlight the difference between the food my toddler was eating and why it’s important to select food from different boxes. This activity was done over a couple week period. I focused on one food group each week, did the activity, talked about it, mentioned it at dinner etc.
Directions: Using Bristol board, divide with marker into four squares (I also left a small space at the bottom to discuss treats at a later time if I choose) Then, select which square to fill and activity to do.
Vegetables and Fruit
This was the easiest group for him to understand. The first activity we did was a fruit bowl (see the purple thing in the square!). We talked about his favourite fruits and as he named them, I cut them out of felt. He glued them onto the ‘bowl’ made of construction paper.What was great at the end, is that there was a variety of colour in his choices. We were able to talk about this as well. For vegetables, we did the activity from a preschool website here: Vegetable Basket //www.first-school.ws/activities/nutrition/veggiebasket1.htm and a Mr. Broccoli Head using this template: http://www.dltk-teach.com/alphabuddies/mbigboybroccoli.html
Dairy
By far, this was the most fun activity because of the mess. I gathered all the grains I had in the cupboard (rice, couscous, oatmeal, flour, pasta etc) and put them in a container (I used an egg carton)Next, my son painted glue on a piece of cardboard (used a cereal box!)
Then, he added bits of the grains onto the glue.
This got messy but it was fun! Let dry. Shake excess grains before adding to your board!
Meats and Meat Alternatives
Instead, I went through the cupboard and fridge and found examples of meat and meat alternatives: Peanut Butter, canned Salmon, Beans, eggs (using an old egg carton) – and I drew a fish and chicken leg!
He identified the foods, and we took the labels off if necessary and glued everything to the square.
Finally, to finish off the activity we talked about cookies being a treat and ‘sometimes’ food and read a book about Cookie Monster and cookies!
Have fun and encourage your child to talk about what they like about certain foods, their favourite things to eat etc.
I know some of you have already sent your children back to school, or started your homeschooling year. In our area we have a few weeks left before we send our kids back, put away the slip and slide and start packing lunches once again. So I am holding onto summer as long as I can with this project, I love this one because watermelons are easily recognizable for even the youngest learners.
- Gather your materials. You will need green and pink(or red) paper, some black paper, a hole punch, green marker, scissors and glue.
- Write a large wide upper case W on the green paper.
- Have your child color the W with a dark green marker.
- Cut a strip of black paper and grab the hole punch. Help your child punch a number of holes. Make sure to gather the punched holes.
My son needed a lot of help with this but wanted desperately to do it. Set aside.
- Layer your W and the pink paper and cut .
- Trim your pink W by about a centimeter along the bottom edge.
- Glue the pink W onto the green W
- Add the punched holes for seeds.
Let dry.
Books
” Eating the Alphabet” by Lois Ehlert is an alphabet book extraordinaire! Wonderful paintings of fruits and vegetables seem ultra simple and it is but somehow the way the author has pieced this simple book together is brilliant. Maybe it’s that children learn about food at the table multiple times a day and feel proud being able to identify not only some of the letters but some of the pictures too! From a teaching standpoint I love that there are both upper and lower case letters on each page! This book will grow with your child, and beware it will also make you
hungry!
“One Watermelon Seed” by Celia Barker Lottridge is a counting book that takes the basic 1, 2, 3 to the next level. The book follows a brother and sister as they plant their seeds 1-10. After the watermelon, pumpkins, tomatoes and more are fully grown they count their bounty! This time counting is done by 10s ! Of course my son’s favorite part wasn’t the counting instead he noticed the different bugs and garden critters on each page. I liked the end of the book where there was a page devoted to allowing the reader to see what the outside and inside of these fruits and vegetables looks like.
We are in the middle of a heatwave and I am so done. My kitchen is too hot to do anything in and with the fans blowing art supplies it’s impossible to do much art. So today we made organic yogurt popsicles , and went outside and played in the shade with our Ocean we made a while back.
- Gather your materials. You will need 2-3 large strawberries ( ripe ripe is best) , a banana, and a small yogurt. You will need a blender and some popsicle molds as well.
- Count your strawberries as you pop them in.
- Next up the banana.
- Squeeze the yogurt
- Blend!
- Taste to make sure it’s ok.
- Pour into the molds
- Pop in the sticks ( I asked specifically for each color, I can’t help it I’m a teacher through and through and these mini lessons just happen)
- Freeze
- Enjoy!
click on the picture for the full instructions and even more !
I am not a big meat eater, but somehow my son is a huge carnivore. He has recently discovered hot dogs and I feel like it may be the end of healthy eating as I once knew it. That or I’ll go broke buying the organic nitrate free ones! Either way I explained we were taking a break from eating hot dogs but that we could make one for art time today. Here is what we did!
- Gather your materials. You will need a brown paper grocery bag ( or other paper) , a brown or black marker, some glue, red and yellow paint, scissors and ketchup and mustard containers. You could use real ones but the beauty of these are that they are solid , washable and kids can’t see that there is only a tiny bit of paint in them. Since there is so little the mess will be manageable.
- Pour the red paint into the ketchup bottle and yellow into the mustard. I thinned it out a little.
- Cut off a large piece from your grocery bag, and draw a bun and a sausage.
- Cut them apart.
- Glue the sausage to the bun.
- Add your condiments. Ignore my impromptu strap in the picture!
- Let dry and cut out.
Song
I’m a little hot dog
here’s my bun
Put me on the grill
until I’m done
Add some mustard
and ketchup
take a big bite
and gobble me up!
Book
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