Food

I love using food to teach concepts to kinders. Every year, on the first day of school, I have the children make a sunflower cookie.  They are sickeningly sweet, but the kids love them.  I give each child a sugar cookie and a craft stick with a generous dollop of lemon frosting (lemon because it's yellow.)  After spreading the frosting around, they count out 8 pieces of candy corn and place them on the cookie as petals.  We aim for symmetry, but don't always succeed.  To top it off, they add chocolate sprinkle seeds in the center.  The little ones enjoy creating their first day snack.  It's a happy way to start the year.



(Click on images to enlarge.)
We had a great time eating our way through the shapes last week.  It was fun to watch the children in action.  Some drew their shapes meticulously with great attention to detail.  Others were created with a quick flick of the wrist and a few swipes of the crayon.  Either way, each child was pleased with his or her effort and the book is a favorite.  The rectangle (sugar wafer cookie) was the tastiest shape hands down.  I think it was the pink that made it taste so good :)

Last Friday we used M&Ms to sort by color.  On Monday, we used the data to create graphs.  It's a great way to reinforce the concepts of more, less and equal.  Over the summer, I found the cutest sorting and graphing sheets to go along with everybody's favorite classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? 
Hop on over to Making Learning Fun to grab your copy.

Have you seen Fran's Happy Birthday book over at Kindergarten Crayons?  It's darling!  I'm thinking about introducing the book next Wednesday, baking cupcakes in class on Thursday (I LOVE cupcakes!) and then decorating them during free choice time on Friday.

How do you use food in your classroom?

Bon Appetit,