Ever since bub got her Ikea kitchen for her birthday back in July she's been all about food. Play food at least, not real food {don't even ask about the dramas we're having with her not eating real food at the moment}. She's constantly cooking us dinner and bringing it over to us to eat. "Mummy eat dinner, daddy eat dinner too". Mmm I love wooden bananas, beans and carrots for dinner, they really hit the spot. Pretend play is definitely all the rage at our house at the moment. If only I could teach her to cook me real food then I'd be set
She's also taken to watching YouTube videos of kids cutting up play fruit and veggies, she'll sit and watch them for ages {as long as I let her anyway}. I don't mind too much as the videos are pretty educational because they teach kids colours and food names {much better than the random unboxing ones}. After a while I thought why not get her some velcro fruit and veggies so she can cut them herself instead of just watching it on a screen, so I decided on the fruit and vegetable sets from Plan Toys.
PLAN TOYS WOODEN FRUIT & VEGETABLE SETS
Plan toys specialise in wooden toys and sustainable play. They use sustainable rubberwood plantations for their toys plus they also use non toxic glue, water based dyes and organic colours. The toys are super safe for little people as well as being environmentally friendly.
Each set comes with 5 pieces of food, a cutting board and a knife. The fruit set includes a strawberry, orange, kiwi fruit, apple and lemon. The vegetable set comes with a tomato, onion, mushroom, cucumber and capsicum. The wood grain has a cork like speckle which creates a realistic appearance when mixed with the organic food colours. The inside is also realistic with seed holes and rind markings moulded into the wood. Are they not the cutest wooden food sets ever?
When I first set them all up all she wanted to do was pick them up and open them all. She was fascinated by the velcro. She didn't really have a clue how to use the knife, which didn't surprise me because the only time she's used a knife before is to poke play dough or kinetic sand. So we initially played with her pots and pans cooking the different fruit and veggies.
She was soon curious of the knife and started trying to cut them all open. I'm not going to lie, while she was learning to use the knife properly was one of the most frustrating times in my parenting life so far. She kept saying "mummy help, daddy help", but when we tried to help she'd lose it at us. Over and over and over again. But, we got there in the end.
After about 40 minutes of us trying to show her the right way to hold the knife and enthusiastically clapping each time she cut a piece open, she had it down pat. I actually thought it would take her a lot longer to master, but it seems positive reinforcement does wonders. Now she won't stop playing with them. Each night after her bath she sits at her table and chairs and cuts up fruit and veggies for almost an hour {she'll make a great sous chef one day}.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
- Colour recognition
- Hand/eye co-ordination
- Improves concentration
- Language development {fruit and vegetable names}
- Fine motor skills {holding and cutting with the knife}
- Imaginary play
The fruit and vegetable sets are great for developing her fine motor skills as she cuts them open and puts them back together. Grasping and pushing on the knife and even pulling the pieces apart with her hands are definitely building her hand strength. Its actually quite impressive the amount of time and concentration she puts into cutting them up and sticking them back together.
We also use them to practice her colours and the names of all the fruits and veggies. She knows all the colours although she gets a little perplexed by the beige mushroom stalk {apparently its orange, that's her default colour when she doesn't know what something is}. She's also doing really well learning all the names, especially the vegetables {begables} which she didn't really know before. There's mato, mushwoom, stawbwee, orange, apple, lemon, wiwi fwuit, pear. Yep you're right there's no pear, but according to her the cucumber was originally a pear, now its a bubumber. How cute are kids when they're learning to talk?! I could listen to her mispronounce words all day and not get sick of it.
She really loves making me and daddy come and sit at the table with her while she plays {but we're not allowed to play, just watch}. She loves cooking her veggies in her pots and pans and serving us dinner, or bringing us random pieces of fruit throughout the day. If only she loved real fruit and vegetables as much as she loves the pretend ones.
WHERE TO BUY PLAN TOYS PRETEND PLAY FOOD
Lots of online toy stores stock Plan Toys - here in Australia you can purchase these sets from Growing Kind, Catch and Amazon AU. They can also be purchased from Amazon US via the links below.
Toni x
Disclosure - This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience, which means I earn a small commission at no cost to you, should you make a purchase.
