Favorite Foods Booklet

Help your child make an accordion-style booklet of their favorite foods.  This activity can be done within a wide range of ages from toddlers to elementary age just by tweaking a few elements; I will make notes as we go along on how to adapt it for various abilities.

 Materials: Grocery circulars, large index cards, scissors, glue stick, sharpie, scotch tape.

The booklet may be made by you or your children, depending on their abilities.  I used four large index cards for the booklet I made.

 Fold each index card in half.  If you are doing this activity with younger children, you might want to use more index cards and leave them unfolded.  The reason for this is that younger children might need more space to work with.  For toddler age you might even want to use an even bigger canvas that you can make from folding construction paper instead.

 Use scotch tape to connect all the folded index cards together.

 The booklet should look like this when you are done taping it together.

 On the outside of the first index card you may label the booklet.  I labeled mine Foods I Like.  If your child knows how to or is learning how to write, encourage them to write the title on their own.

 Have children look through grocery circulars and cut out their favorite foods.  For younger children, have some pre-cut foods that they can choose from.

 Glue one food to each half of the index card.

 It should look something like this.

 Depending on the interest and attention span of the child they may also continue to add pictures to the back side of the index cards.  I only did the front sides here.

 You may also label each picture and read it together with your child/ren.  If your children knows or is practicing writing, let them label each picture.  Another alternative to this activity is letting children draw pictures of their favorite food instead of cutting out pictures.

Encourage your child/ren to "read" their books to family and friends!

Grocery Name Collage

Practice letter and name recognition with this grocery-themed activity!

 Materials: Paper grocery bag, grocery store circulars, scissors, glue stick.

Cut front and back panels of paper grocery bag. Only one panel will be used per child.  I turned bag on the side that had no writing.

 Depending on time and/or the abilities of your child/ren, you may either pre-cut the letters in their name, give them random precut letters and let them find the letters to spell their name, look through the circulars and find their letter names together and you cut them out, or they may look through the circulars on their own and cut out their own letters.  If the children will be cutting out their own letters, give them scissors that they may easily manipulate. (Ex. Give them child-size scissors instead of the large pair that I have pictured.)

 Once the letters have been cut out, let your child glue the letters of their name in the appropriate order in the center of the paper bag.

 In the next step, the children look through the circulars and cut out their favorite food. Or you may pre-cut food out of the circulars, display them and have children pick from your pile.

 Once they have cut out all their favorite food, they may then proceed to glue all the food onto the paper bag  around their name.  I am using a small-size glue stick, but there are also chubbier glue sticks available that might be easier for little hands or children with special needs to manipulate.

If you are doing this activity as a classroom, you may display these on a board titled

"We Are What We Eat!"