Activity: Food Memory Game

I was originally going to include a photo in this post of L enjoying playing this memory game, HOWEVER he is covered ears to toes in a strep rash and in a couple years he probably won't appreciate having his picture posted on the internet covered in gross red splotches. We took him grocery shopping and a man in the parking lot saw him and made a disgusted face! Even though Ldidn't notice, I still felt like giving him a big cuddle and that guy the dirtiest look I could muster :(  Anyhow, I hope you like this little game I made as much as we did!

How to Prepare

Follow the link below to get started! Just download the images and either print on cardstock or laminate the sheets after printing and then cut apart (I don't have a laminator but I've become a big fan of these self-laminating sheets).

How to Play

This memory game is suitable for young toddlers all the way up to older preschoolers, depending on how you play it. For younger toddlers make this into a simple matching game using only one set of images. Have all the pieces facing upwards, pick out one image and ask the child to find another one just like it. For this age group also use this as a word excercise identifying both the foods pictured and what colors they are.

For older toddlers and preschoolers, start out the memory game by choosing only two sets of cards (4 cards total) and lay them face down. Flip one card face up. Pick a second card and flip it up. See if it matches the first card.  Continue to flip up cards until one matches.  Take the matching pair of cards and put them next to your child. Put the rest of the game cards face down again and repeat the game.  Try to remember the cards you have flipped over. Make sure to keep the cards in the same place in the layout.

To make the game more challenging as your child is ready, take one turn flipping only two cards, so that your child has to remember where the matching card is. You can then add more sets of cards until you are able to use both entire sets.

Also...

You can also use these cards as part of a refrigerator/pantry scavenger hunt to find the corresponding item when the memory game gets boring!

Download the full-sized game cards here! 

Book Round-up: Teaching Kids Where Food Comes From

I believe that it's important for kids to make the connection of where food comes from beyond the grocery store. With the increase of the world's population that live in cities, children are losing sight of the fact that actual people grow our food. We have come far from the era where most of us lived on the family farm and the majority of us are exclusively consumers rather than producers of our food. This disconnect is important because food is something that we not only rely on for our health and well-being, but also has significant cultural value and the choices about how that food is produced have major impacts on the environment that our children will grow up in.

Many kids don't know what eggs are, that apples grow on trees, that bacon comes from pigs, that milk comes not from a jug but from a cow, or that vegetables grow in dirt. Thousands of 8 year olds in the UK think that cows lay eggs.

Beyond making the connection with books and with your kids in the kitchen, give your munchkins the opportunity to appreciate hands-on the sights and smells of food production by taking them on a visit to a farmer's market, take a trip to a local farm, go on a family u-pick trip, volunteer together in a community food garden, or start your own veggie patch and get their hands in the dirt. Children are naturally curious to explore and understand the world around them, it's up to us to offer the opportunities to develop a healthy appreciation of real food and where it comes from that will hopefully last a lifetime.


0-2 YEARS

Spot's Harvest by: Eric Hill


Very cute, simple and bright book in the beloved Spot collection. Spot and his monkey friend pick apples and pumpkins and enjoy their harvest as pie and hot apple cider.









Growing Vegetable Soup: Lap-Sized Board Book by: Lois Ehlert

Incredibly bright and graphic, this book follows a father and child as they plant, water, tend, and eventually pick vegetables. They take the vegetables home and make them into tasty vegetable soup. Even has a recipe for that soup at the end of the book! Such a good book.




3-5 YEARS

Out and About at the Dairy Farm by: Andy Murphy

Fun and concise introduction to where milk comes from. Introduces children to calves, heifers, and milking cows and is filled with facts to appeal to this age group. It even includes a recipe for homemade ice cream!











Pancakes, Pancakes! by: Eric Carle

In this super cute book, a very determined little boy wakes up hungry one morning and decides that he would like pancakes for breakfast. His mother sends him out on their farm to gather all the ingredients she needs to make them: milk from the cow, eggs from the chicken, and flour from the mill. 




4-8 YEARS





Oliver's Fruit Salad by: Vivian French

Oliver helps his grandfather grow and pick fruit from the garden, but he refuses to eat any of it. That is, until Oliver helps grandpa make a big and delicious fruit salad that proves just too much to resist. This bold and colorful  book helps encourage kids to try something new.










The Vegetables We Eat by Gail Gibbons


This book describes all the families of vegetables from how they are grown to how they get to the supermarket or farm stand. Filled with interesting facts as well as information for kids on how to take care of their own garden. A wealth of information presented in a fun kid-friendly format. 





The Milk Makers by: Gail Gibbons

Describes every possible step in the making of milk, from what the cow eats all the way to your family's breakfast table. Very detailed and accurate but also still very entertaining and easy to read.







 
 9-12 YEARS

Bread Comes to Life: A Garden of Wheat and a Loaf to Eat by: George Levenson

This book, written in rhyme covers a lot of ground, following a mystery baker growing wheat, grinding flour, mixing, shaping, and baking bread. Full of fantastic photos and includes a recipe for whole wheat bread. A perfect intro before getting your children to help you make their very own loaf.




For Parents


Kitchen Literacy:How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From by: Ann Velesis



Written by a noted historian, this book traces the path that has led people to become disassociated from the origins of their food, from the role manufacturers, to urbanization, to transportation systems. This book is fascinating fun read and a good start, but it doesn't fully delve into what we can do and issues of poverty as much as I would like. However, I would still recommend it for those who are interested in this issue.




Disclaimer: If you click through on these links and purchase these books from Amazon, I will earn a dollar or two -- which goes towards my food budget. However, that has nothing to do with why I have posted this selection of books and by all means, if you are interested in them take them out from your local library or purchase them from your favorite seller.

Activities from the Kitchen: Ball Bash

My son had so much fun with this one, as you can see from this video! This is a great activity for burning off some excess kid steam particularly on a bad weather day when stuck indoors. This activity is dead easy, inexpensive, quick to set up, and a fun way to practice hand-eye coordination. 

 To set up the Ball Bash you will need:

- a ball (beach balls are good for toddlers as they are large and easily batted 

           around, preschoolers might prefer a smaller and more challenging  

           ball-just make sure that there's somewhere to attach a string to)

- a wooden spoon, paper towel tube, or similar

- some kitchen twine

- a piece of duct tape

Attach the string to the loop of the beach ball nozzle, making sure it's secure. Tape other end of string to the ceiling just out of your child's reach. Hand your child the wooden spoon and let the whacking begin!

Activities from the Recycle Bin: Crayon Holders

Ok, so this isn't really an activity in and of itself, but it does help the kiddos in going about their activities in an orderly way and it makes it easy for them to help clean up after themselves. I found this Montessori-Style crayon holder made from fruit cups(!) at Mom's Crafty Space and I loved it so much that I thought I would share it here. Click here to see how she did it.

Fledgling Foodie Activity: Fruit Activity Cards

Luc would eat fruit all day if we let him and lately he's been really interested in learning the names for different fruits. I came up with these Fruit Activity Cards to play into that interest. They cost literally nothing to make and could be used in so many ways. We did a simple matching game of finding fruit from bowl and putting it with the picture, but you could also add a tasting component, make a game of grouping them together to match what your child is having for lunch, etc, etc. Since these were successful, I'm planning to make more fruits as well as vegetable cards and perhaps ones for other foods. 

To make these cards you will need:

- a cardboard box

- some plain white printer paper

- clear packing tape

- colouring materials (I used Luc's crayons since they were handy)

- scissors

I printed the outlines out on the computer using clip art and then cut them out, but if you can draw you could just draw them. I found most of the clip art here, and just did a Google image search for the others. I sized them to all the same size in Word and then printed them. You could add the names of the fruits to the cards if you wanted to make the activity cards into a pre-reading exercise as well.

Colour in your fruit images and then cut them out. Cut out pieces of the cardboard box to match the size of your fruit cutouts. Line up the two pieces and cover the whole card with clear packing tape.

Now you and your munchkin are ready to play!

Activities from the Recycle Bin: Plunker

I thought I would test out the idea of posting baby, toddler, and kids activities once a week and see if people would be interested in these posts. These activities would either be food related, made with items that you would find in the kitchen heading to the recycle bin, or be activity-based recipes. The idea is that they will be quick and simple things that you don't have to be an experienced crafter to pull off. I will post a few over the next couple of weeks; please let me know what you think!


This is an idea I got from the book Things to Do with Toddlers and Twos. This activity takes advantage of the compulsion of toddlers to put things into holes. You will need an empty clean coffee can or similar. Just cut an X into the lid and you have a Plunker.

Now just find a variety of items from around your home that your toddler can drop in to make a satisfying sound, making sure obviously that they are too large to be choking hazards. Look for a variety of materials (wood, plastic, rubber, metal, etc) so that they all make different noises as they hit the bottom of the can.

And that's it! Super simple, but appealing to ones and twos and when they tire of it, you can just put the can back into the recycling. Luc also enjoyed working on his fine motor skills by practicing taking the lid on and off.