Thursday, January 26, 2012

Yummy Food Is a Great Teaching Tool!

Hi, my name is Sabrina and I am an Account Manager at Discount School Supply®. As a mother of a 17-month-old daughter, I am constantly looking for dual purpose products that can be used for education as well as playtime. Thankfully, I found such a product in our Yummy Plush Play Food Set (YUMMY), a 25-piece plush food play set which includes: bacon, an orange half, grapes, a whole banana, a strawberry, a tomato slice, a whole apple, a lettuce leaf, a whole carrot, corn on the cob, half an avocado, a pea pod, broccoli, a baked potato with butter, two halves of a hardboiled egg, two slices of wheat bread, a tortilla, beans, Swiss cheese and milk.

This product really can be used for so many things. I’ve used it for color recognition, shape and textural/sensory play, and as a way to find out what my daughter wants to eat. We play a game where I will lay out a few pieces of the plush food set (depending on what we have in the pantry) and I will let her choose what she wants to have for dinner. Or I will put different combinations of foods together and let her know what we will have to eat for that particular meal. For instance, I will put the eggs, bread and bacon strip on her plate for breakfast or the banana on her plate for snack while I’m preparing the actual meal.

What I like about the product the most is that the colors are vibrant and true colors, not dull or faded tones. The pieces are appropriately sized for what they represent (with exception of the banana and corn on the cob) yet are still small enough for her little hands to grasp, and it’s not one of those toys that “gets old” after a few uses. My daughter has been playing with these since she was nine months old, and even now, eight months later, still loves to use them. She received a new play kitchen for Christmas and she will be getting even more use out of this food set in the years to come. 

Savannah at nine months old playing with the strawberry =)