Encouraging children to eat and enjoy a healthy, varied-diet and develop positive nutritional behaviours is something every parent strives to achieve. Many factors including increasing costs, the rise in the availability of processed foods, reduced cooking skills and busy lifestyles have all impacted on children’s diets and ultimately their future well-being. Parents have a role to play in shaping children’s food preferences and developing behaviours around food choices and mealtimes and one ideal medium for this is learning through food play.
Food play provides an opportunity to expose children to foods they may not be familiar with allowing them to explore in a fun environment. As children learn through their own experiences planning opportunities for them to play and experiment with ‘healthy’ foods can implicitly develop their understanding of the choices that are better for them.
Food play can be planned for a specific purpose, such as preparing a snack or lunch or it can simply be an opportunity for child led learning as they explore through role-play, food handling, songs and stories.
Some opportunities to consider:
Sensory play – Children can increase their familiarity with different foods and develop their ability to identify them, increasing their awareness of textures, smells and colours. This could include homemade play dough, bread dough, whole fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices and usingcooking equipment such as whisks, mixing bowls and spoons.
Role play – At home you could set up a simple shop, café or kitchen providing an opportunity to develop imaginative play and model behaviours. Including real foods can enhance the experience and further develop vocabulary.
Cookery – Preparing food for a purpose can be an ideal opportunity to develop habits around food choices therefore planning variety is key to help children develop a range of food preferences. This provides a great opportunity to wash, cut, mix and mash foods and can be linked to snacks or lunchtime, such as cutting up soft fruits or making a sandwich.
Food Art – Food can be used to create a piece of art that can be eaten, such as soft berry butterflies or banana flowers or it can be used as a printing/mark making tool. Vegetables such as potatoes, broccoli, corn on the cob and mushrooms can be used to make interesting patterns and shapes.
Stories and songs – Choose songs about food to engage children further and embed healthy choices. The Internet is a great resource for finding new songs and include old favourites such as five little peas, one potato, two potato and Pat-a-cake.
Themes – There are any opportunities to widen food experience throughout the year linked to different seasons, festivals and celebrations. Many of these include certain foods and traditions that children find fascinating.
Exposure to a variety of foods through play can be highly valuable for children in developing their nutritional behaviours and other developmental stages such as communication and language, physical development and personal, social and emotional development. Have fun with food and watch your child’s food choices grow and develop.
