FOOD!

Make Lunch Together

This week, try making a meal with your child. In this video, I’m making myself a PB & J for lunch. Think about a meal that your child could help you prepare. As always, safety first! Make sure you are always with your child during meal preparation so they stay safe. 

• • For a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, they might help you scoop the peanut butter onto the bread, or help you spread the jelly. Maybe they can help you put the 2 pieces of bread together, or even cut the sandwich into pieces.

  • If you’re making macaroni and cheese, maybe your child can help you pour the pasta into the water, or help stir. Maybe they can get the plate ready while you spoon it out.

  • If you’re making a meal with different items on a plate together, have your child put the items on the plate. You can tell your child where to put each item and talk about whether they all fit.

After your meal, have your child help you clean up and model how to do a good job.

As you’re cooking and eating together, remember that you are a great model of language. Your language can include things like:

• • Actions: Use words like cut, spread, stir, scoop, pour to talk about what you and your child are doing, or need to do, to make the meal. When you sit down to eat, you can add words like bite, chew, eat, pass, sit down. During clean-up time, use words like wash, clean up, wipe.

  • Objects: Use the vocabulary for the items you’re using, like dishes, utensils, pots and pans, and food items. You can also talk about areas of the kitchen, where you might find things, and words like cupboard, drawer, shelf, rack.

  • Descriptions: Use words to talk about the food you’re making. Is it sticky, smooth, creamy, crunchy, salty, sweet? What color is it? What shape? Does it taste delicious?

  • Pronouns: This is a great opportunity for pronouns like “mine” and “yours.” If you are making food for another family member, you can talk about that person using “he” or “she.”

  • Prepositions: Talk about where to find different food or cooking items, direct your child to put the food on the plate in a certain way, or help your child know where to put a dirty dish after your meal. Use words like in, on, under, above, behind, in front, next to, between.

Cutting and Spreading Soft Foods (Fine Motor Activity)

You and your child can cut or spread foods to prepare for lunch, to get more exposure to foods they are reticent to eat, to work on fine motor skills, or just to have fun!

First, make sure your child is at the right height for this activity. Have your child sit at a table or stand on a step-stool to achieve this. Then, make sure to have your child wash his or her hands thoroughly. This is a good time to review hand washing procedures.

Use a cutting board and provide a child-safe knife, such as a butter knife.

Cutting: easy foods to start with include bananas, cooked veggies, melon (sliced with the rind removed), hard boiled eggs (shell removed, cut in half with flat side down), or jarred peach halves. Show your child how to use their helper hand to anchor the food and their strong hand to hold the knife.

Spreading: easy substances include softened butter, well mixed nut butter, humus, cream cheese, jam, guacamole. Try spreading these on thick bread to reduce tearing or crumbling. Again, show your child to use their helper hand to stabilize the jar or bread while using their strong hand to hold the knife.

Let your child experiment and have fun. Keep the experience positive. Directions to keep the activity safe are fine, but otherwise, try to keep directions and corrections to a minimum. Tell your child what TO do rather than what NOT to do. For example, you can say, "Move your fingers" if the knife is too close.Describe their actions.  Be sure to provide specific feedback, such as, "I can see you are focused" or "You cut the whole banana! You must feel proud." You may want to take some pictures to reflect back on or share with family members.

Cutting and spreading might get a little messy and that's okay. It means that kids are engaged and learning. Afterwards, clean up together. This is a good time to work on following one- and two-step instructions.

Cooking With Your Child

Cooking with your child can be a very fun way to support multiple areas of development! Three key points to remember before you start: follow your child's lead, use what you have, and make it fun.

In this video I'm using a premade brownie mix for several reasons: it's easy, it's semi quick if I set up the environment to support the activity moving quickly, and because brownies are tasty!

Choosing your activity

In this video I've chosen baking brownies, however you may use the techniques in this activity and apply them to pretty much any activity to engage with your child, in the kitchen or otherwise. Making sure to choose an activity that's motivating for your child will be key.

Setting up the environment

Depending on what level your child is at, how long they are able to sustain their attention, and how motivated they are in the kitchen will depend on how you set up your environment. In general, 3-4 year olds are learning to sustain their attention, therefore I prefer to get all ingredients ready to go before I ask them to join me in the activity (baking). You will see that I have all ingredients out and ready to go so when the child arrives at the activity there is far less wait time to keep the child engaged.

Beginning the activity

Set up the instructions so they are visible. Try and break up the instructions up in the most simplistic way possible. Ideally instructions will be a 3-4 step sequence as to keep it simple for your child. Another reason I chose these particular brownies to bake is because they come with a very simplistic 3 step breakdown for instructions which include visuals to aid our child in following instructions. In the beginning we review instructions using "first, next, then, last" language for the activity

Cutting and Gluing Food Ads

Take those food ads that clog up your mailbox and turn them into an opportunity for your child to develop his or her fine motor skills. Your child can rip, snip, or cut food ads, glue them on paper, and talk about their work.

Not all kids will be ready to cut out pictures of foods from food ads. If your child cannot yet manipulate scissors, have them rip pages and glue. If your child does not yet make continuous cuts with scissors, pick some pictures with your child, cut them out (leaving a border of space around the desired picture), and allow them to snip a fringe around the picture. If your child is able to cut out pictures, you may want to modify the activity by tearing the ads into smaller pieces.

Your child may simply want to glue pictures on paper and draw on the paper. You can also encourage your child to find a certain number of pictures to work on counting, make a little book of foods they like and dislike, or make a chart of food that are healthy and foods that are special treats. Write down what your child has to say on the paper (such as "I like pizza") to help them learn that print has meaning.

Pretend Play with Food

Children’s earliest pretend play involves acting out things they see frequently at home, such as cooking or caring for a baby. Your child probably pretends to cook or feed others already. Kids may use miniature or pretend objects in their play at first, then move into imaginative objects as they get older. This might be pom pom ball, blocks, or wholly pretend objects.

There are many ways to support your child’s development through play within the theme of cooking and mealtimes. Here are some examples:

• Supply them with new, open-ended objects to use in their play; use objects you have in your home, such as empty toilet paper rolls, boxes, pillowcases. You can combine these with real items, such as pots, measuring cups, and spoons. Let your child explore and watch what they do!

• Take your play outside; use old bowls, spoons, water, and dirt to make mud pies. Getting dirty means you’re having fun!

• Encourage the use of symbolic representation (pretending an object is something other than what it is – a crumbled piece of paper becomes a meatball).

• Have a pretend restaurant. You can make menus by drawing pictures of food on paper or cutting out food ads and gluing them on (this provides opportunities to work on preliteracy and fine motor skills). Use pieces of cut-up paper as money. Pretend to be the waiter or chef first and then switch roles. (Stuffed animals and older siblings make good customers)

*  If your child struggles with this, modeling may be helpful. This cute video has two kids modeling a simple restaurant play scheme:    

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaqPsQYzCl4

• Make pretend recipes and “cook” together using play-dough! This is good for sequencing, the ability to logically order events. Draw simple pictures to help with the steps. For example, to make a doughnut, your child would roll a ball, poke a hole in the middle, and then pretend to eat.

• Read a book about cooking and then act it out! Pete’s a Pizza by William Steig is a fun one to try. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wd24gKvLnA

Tips for Parents of Picky Eaters

Many parents report their preschool aged child to be a "picky eater." If mealtime is a battle watch this video from the American Academy of Pediatrics to help parents during mealtime. Below are other creative ways to support your child explore new foods.

Get your child involved - Children are more likely to participate in trying new food/drink if they are involved in the process.

• Mealtime prep - Keeping safety in mind let/help your child: chop, roll, stir, add ingredients in, pour, measure, press buttons, etc. 

• Shopping - Take your child with you while shopping for groceries. Let your child pick out food they may want to try, like, or refuse.

• Let them choose - Offering your child choices can be helpful to give children control of what's on their plate (e.g., "Would you like blueberries or an apple with your eggs?" Would you like carrots, or cucumber with your sandwich?" "Would you like milk or water to drink?").

• Grow a garden- When children take part in planting, watering, and watching the fruits of their labor, they are more likely to try the foods they plant.

Practice - Children, especially preschool aged children, are creatures of habit and when presented with a new food, will often refuse it. Rather than turning new food into a negative experience encourage your child to practice exploring the new food.

• Use your five senses to explore the food: Smell it, listen to it (does it squeak, sizzle, crunch, etc.?), feel it (is it squishy, hard, lumpy, cool, warm, rough, etc.?), look at it (what color is it? How many do you have? What is the shape? etc.), and lastly taste it if your child is willing.

• Feed a baby. An effective way to introduce children to new experiences, thoughts, feelings, ideas is to roll play or  practice before the event. Practicing can be done in several ways, however for preschoolers play is the most natural and effective way to teach a new skill. Set the scene for your child; you'll need a stuffed animal/doll, pretend food/something you can label as the target item you're trying to introduce, pretend/real utensils. Give your child the control be allowing them to feed the baby and roll play through the scheme. Once your child has practiced feeding, offer the target food at mealtime and recall the play scheme from earlier.

• Other resources:

www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/childrens-health/in-depth/childrens-health/art-20044948