Spoon Sort

This was a quick and easy sort I created within minutes.  I was working on making some other food trays and E was playing around with some of the things I have stored away.  

He pulled out the pom poms and started spooning them into some bowls.  I made a joke about the purple ones looking like grapes and things began to snowball.  Soon, the red ones were cherry tomatoes, the  tiny green ones became peas, yellow turned to corn, and the pink ones were cherries.

I went downstairs and grabbed something that I knew would be perfect for this activity and a tray was born.

Shape Sorter

I haven't posted anything for T for quite some time and I wanted to mention one of my favorite basket toys to use with him.  We have a bucket very similar to the one pictured below.  It is a basic shape sorter but also has nesting cups.    

Long before starting tray time with E, I used to sit and work with him on this toy.  With both boys, I only presented circles and squares to start with to give them a better chance of success.

Online Food Games

I found a few food games online that E has been playing the last few weeks.

Sid the Science Kid has a game where you have to pick food and put it on a plate for Sid.  The goal is to pick a food from each group.   At first it was hard, but E soon realized that the foods light up to match the colors on the plate.

Sesame street also has some food games and videos that E enjoyed.  The nice thing about this site is you can search within each section for selections tagged food.

Pasta Necklace

Continuing with our food theme, I had E make a pasta necklace this week.  This simple and classic activity is great for working those little fingers.

E liked the necklace so much that he wore it for quite some time after making it.  For the next few days, I would take the noodles off and have him practice making the necklace again.

Felt Board Food

The felt board/pocket chart I received for Christmas came with a set of pictures and words all pertaining to a farm theme.  I pulled out the food words and pictures and made a quick reading activity for E.

I simply put the words in the pocket chart and added the pictures to the board on the top.  Then, I had E try and match the pictures to the words below.

He did a great job using first letter clues to figure out where everything went.

Sorting Food Groups

Today, I tried to explain to E that there are different food groups.  I used terms like different food families and he seemed to catch on somewhat.  That's what I thought until he later told his father that pie was a food group.

Nonetheless, we are continuing with the idea even if I simply succeed in making him aware that there are different groups of food and we need a bit of each in our meals everyday. 

I found a food group game (go figure) at a consignment sale a while back and decided to use the game pieces to make this tray.  We used my veggie platter to sort the pieces into different groups.  It helped that the pictures in each group had matching background colors.

We sorted them together and talked about the names of the groups as well as the foods within them.  We put the junk food in the middle and talked about how we should only have a little of these things and how they should be eaten after we have eaten from the other groups first or on special occasions.

Food Books

I went to the library this week in search of some books about food.  I wanted to find some fun books that were more than then pictures of food and descriptions of food groups.  These are a few of the fun books I found.

  

These are two books that E really liked.  The pictures are all of food made into very creative pictures.  We had fun reading them as well as trying to name what food each picture included.

This is a cute book with very simple text and pictures.

This book is a classic and for good reason.  Beyond the wonderful text and pictures, there are so many teaching points one can gather from it.  We have been reading it this week and I plan on exploring it further next week during tray time.

E is currently 35 months old.