Educate with Jen

This is possibily one of the easiest and most effective additions I have ever added to a play kitchen area in a classroom. It took a total of about an hour to complete and the children loved it!

Materials:

Toy food from the kitchen area

a camera- I used the one on my phone 

a laptop - to make the document 

printer 

a laminating machine 

I set about one afternoon collecting all of the food available in the toy kitchen. This was most definitely a process considering the children will put the food back in any old place when it comes time to tidy up! Once I had gathered up all of the food I took pictures of it with my phone. I then sent the photos to my laptop and put them into a word document. The longest part of the process was manuvering the pictures to make the layout look appealing.  I decided to put the words of each of the foods underneath the picture to develop print awareness I printed out the document and finally I laminated the page. For the menu to have any chance of survival it needed to be laminated!

Results:

The children loved playing with the menu. I found that it encouraged children to use “restaurant vocabulary” and was a great way to encourage groups of children to work and play together. 

This acitivty develops vocabulary, print awareness, and is a great way to encourge participation of groups of children 

If you want to buy any of my favourite toy kitchen products, follow the links below.

Food play set with pots 

Fast food play set