Eat Your Greens!
I almost can't believe that my daughter actually enjoys helping out around the house. She likes to hand me wet clothes to be hung out to dry, set the table for meals, put away groceries, and vacuum cleaning. She's even teaching her little brother to help out. And most of all, she loves to help with preparing meals.
Like many moms, I fantasize the idea of cooking with my kids in the kitchen and sharing secret family recipes. In reality, cooking with kids is not easy - it requires time, patience, and extra clean-up. But I think it is well worth the effort, especially when my daughter is quickly picking up new Cantonese words during the process.
My daughter is fascinated by the colors and shapes of different vegetables. So she has inspired me to have a Vegetable theme this time. As usual, here's an A3 poster on this particular theme. You can also find the Vegetable themed flashcards here.
Touch and Feel
The learning experience is much more fun and memorable if your child can touch, smell and see the objects at the same time as hearing the new words. You can first show your child the vegetable and then teach them its name. Let them feel its texture, smell it, and maybe even taste it (maybe the cooked version for some). When your child is familiar with the new words, you can blindfold your child and let them guess the vegetable you put in their hands. Alternatively, you can hide the vegetables under a blanket and let your child touch and guess each one of them.
Stamp and Print
After using the vegetables as realia, you can simply use them to make a delicious meal or a nutritious smoothie. Or you can use them (just the firm ones, nothing squishy) for some vegetable printing crafts. You can slice them in various ways (horizontally, vertically, diagonally), and let your child print-paint them onto a piece of paper. If you need some inspirations, check out my "Crafts: Veggie Printing 蔬果印畫" Pinterest board.
Cut and Paste
My daughter is currently obsessed with using her scissors. So I asked her to cut out different vegetables from a stack of supermarket leaflets and make her own poster. It made a great independent, quiet activity and bought me almost an hour of peace! All you need are a stack of old leaflets (or cooking magazines), a pair of scissors, some glue, and a piece of A3 paper. My daughter was so happy that she beat me as her poster has more "new" vegetables - and I'm of course happy to introduce more new words to her.
Do you have other fun vegetable-themed games? Share them in a comment.
