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Today we have activities that incorporate many items most of us already have in kitchen for learning.
Use your noodle to think of a fun project for these colorful little pastas. These would be perfect for practicing patterning skills. Thanks for the fun idea Mama Bear's Cubhouse.
Anna at k e household uses her macaroni for an indoor sensory play tray. Her daughter enjoys scooping, dumping, and touching the pasta with her hands and feet.
Katie from Katie's Nesting Spot suggests stringing fruit loops onto pipe cleaners to practice fine motor skills, especially if your child is having difficulty with a bead and string set. The stiffness of the pipe cleaner really helps prevent frustration.
Jennwa at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman shows us how to make plastic stencils out of butter lids that might normally end up in the trash. This would be a fun and simple art project for even the youngest of artists. It could easily be tied into your learning content area, just make the stencil in a shape related to your unit. You could easily make a little counting book or illustrate a counting poem using this craft.
Discovery tables can be filled with all different items from your pantry. They tend to provide hours of fun for young children as they sift through rice, pasta, beans, and more. For an adaptation appropriate for elementary age children, try this. Hide many different coins in the rice. Have the students search for coins, name them, count them, make change, and more!
The Official HSB Community devoted an entire post to discovery table alternatives.
Lee Wade has a series of Cheerio Play books perfect for working on one-to-one correspondence with very little learners. Notice at the bottom of the link there is also a similar book that uses raisins. Both cheerios and raisins are staples in our pantry.
This toast looks too pretty to eat. Check out the instructions on Teaching Tiny Tots.
Try making a 123 lunch, the combinations are endless and at the end of a counting lesson you get to eat it! Here is an example from Katie's Nesting Spot.
1 cheese stick
2 tomatoes
3 green peppers
4 pieces of cucumber
5 pieces of clementine
6 spirals of turkey
7 marshmallows (for dessert!)
For Elementary Aged Learners Try this Lesson:
Today's Giveaway:
2 Simple Science Experiment books for putting more of your pantry items to use!
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To Win:
Leave a comment, and if there is a way you incorporate kitchen items such as food or recyclables into learning lets us all know!
Send us a submission
Become a follower
Add our button to your site
Tweet about ABC and 123, come leave us a comment so we know you did it!
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Good Luck! We’ll announce a winner tomorrow!
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We love to paint with kitchen utincils. We love to play with flour, rice, dried noodles, dried beans, and cooked cooked noodles in the sensory table.
ReplyDeleteLOVE the idea of using the pipe cleaner! We have had many frustrations over trying to get fruit loops on a string!!!
ReplyDeleteI think we are going to make an indoor sensory tray today! The girls would really enjoy that!
What a yummy and educational lunch! I think we will try that as well!!!
Thank you ladies!
Let's see, some of the ways we use kitchen items to learn:
ReplyDeleteUsing little candies, or colored pastas to count or separate into colors.
We have seperated fruit loops into colors and then glued them onto paper in the shape of a rainbow. (they LOVED this!)
We "built" an ark with paper and lined the bottom with icing. Then we stood animal crackers up in the icing. We talked about Noah and the ark and then counted to make sure we had 2 of each animal.
We also talk a lot about subtraction as we are eating things like cut up apples, grapes, etc. They will count how many they have and then eat one and say how many they have left.
We also use math a lot when baking. We talk about these concepts as we add ingredients.
Great post! I have lots of blog-jogging to do now!
ReplyDeleteMy idea to add is to keep a plastic shoe box of different kids of dried beans and a shoe box of kitchen items - measuring cups and spoons, big spoons, small spoons, tongs, bowls, muffin tins, etc. pull them out and a big cookie sheet and let them go to town! They can sort, pattern, "cook", scoop, pour...this keeps my girls busy for a LONG time!
Great ideas! One thing that is both useful and educational...I let my toddler take all of the tupperware out of the cupboard and then stacking everything nicely back in. She has to plan where everything is going to go to fit it all back in (we have a bunch, doesn't everyone), group similar shapes, etc. Thanks for linking to Kid Friendly Friday!
ReplyDeleteyay! I was featured!
ReplyDeleteWe use milk jugs for birdfeeders and then watch the birds (but mostly squirrels!) eat their breakfast.
I am a follower.
ReplyDeleteI like Hadley's above idea, and am going to do it this weekend!
I use empty paper rolls for all sorts of art projects (fire hose, trains, binoculars). When my kids were smaller, in the winter, I would fill a plastic container with the rice and the kids would pretend it was sand and play there with their sand toys. We use dry pasta to make jewelry. We use baking soda and vinegar to build volcanoes.
ReplyDeleteWe use empty yogurt containers (500g - with lids) for everything from holding markers and crayons, to activities like pushing popsicle sticks through a slot in one of the lids. (Bear's all time favorite thing to do at the moment.)
ReplyDeleteWe also reuse toilet paper and paper towel tubes for tunnels for her little cars.
I like that tupperware idea.
I am a follower (as the girl who painted trees).
ReplyDeleteThese are great ideas. One thing my boys love to do is play in food! I have 2 large plastic boxes. One is filled with beans and the other is filled with rice and oatmeal. My kids love to scoop, pour and dump. My 4 year old always drives his cars in the oatmeal. You can see pictures of this here at my blog. Just scroll to the bottom of the site. This is the bin of beans.
ReplyDeletehttp://onemomfiveboys.blogspot.com/2009/01/im-posting-some-pictures.html
Our favorite food item to play with is cornstarch...dry and wet. Now that the weather is getting nicer you can put the little ones outside with a bin of cornstarch and containers of water and let them have fun!
ReplyDeleteWe use food to learn about textures and colors, shapes and sorting.
ReplyDeleteI love to finger paint with chocolate pudding with the kids at daycare and toddlers I babysit! the best is with a cute pig pattern printed on pink construction paper to paint "mud" onto!
ReplyDeleteI am a follower too!
we do lots of recylced art and i keep my clear plastic egg cartons(eggland best) for paint and stuff!
ReplyDeleteSuch wonderful ideas! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteStringing hoops on a pipe cleaner is brilliant. So much sturdier and helps the children feel successful and independent! Great ideas you've shared today! Thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteSo many ideas. Thanks for sharing them with all of us.
ReplyDeleteSharinskishe