Exploring With Food! – Toddler Style

Growing up, I was always told not to play with my food, but now that I’m older and have children, I do! And I’m teaching my toddler that it’s okay to!

Well, not to play with her breakfast, lunch or dinner, but anything that we aren’t eating! What can be better than exploring with food? And honestly, they make some of the best arts and crafts projects. It’s not only fun, but it actually gives you a chance to teach your child various concepts such as sensory, shape recognition, color recognition, and even basic mathematical concepts.

Today, I let her play with Fruit Loops cereal. These little cheerios look alike are perfect because they are thicker and bigger than cheerios and they come in various colors. So already, you have shapes: circles, colors: red, yellow, green, blue, and sensory: the various fruit smells.

One of the first things that we worked on was identifying colors. I asked her to name each color as I pointed.

Next, we worked on sorting. This was perfect because I have different colored cups that we use for sorting our counting bears. I gave her a pile of various colors of fruit loops and told her to place the cereal where they belong; red goes in the red cup, yellow goes in the yellow cup, etc.

Then we worked on counting. I had her count out the number of cereal based on colors.

Lastly, we created a rainbow using the different colors of cereal, glue, and construction paper. Of course, she needed guidance, so I made a mini rainbow and used markers to color in the lines so that she would know where each color belonged.

See, it’s simple as that! It’s easy to find ways to teach your toddler simple concepts using random items around the house! It also makes for a fun learning experience!