Choose My Plate is a program set forth by the United States Department of Agriculture, geared to improve healthy eating. It serves as a reference for those seeking to foster good health, and an active lifestyle. Its guidelines recognize the significance in creating a healthy “plate”, limiting the amount of foods with excessive sugar, fat, and salt, ingesting the recommended number of calories for one’s body type, and remaining physically active. Using pictures from magazines, your little one selected healthy foods to include on a collective “plate”. By doing so, they are learning to make healthy food choices. This was a collaborative effort, so your little one was encouraged to work within a group, problem solve with their peers, and share their ideas with one another.

Watermelons are large fruits that grow on a vine. Their large crinkled leaves thrive best in warm environments, and grow rampantly without too much attention. Using the pasta from our fine motor activity and contact paper, we created our very own watermelons! This activity provided several opportunities for your little ones’ cognitive growth. By arranging the pasta on the contact paper, they had to master space as they considered how the objects fit together. As they placed their pasta onto the paper, they were also encouraged to count. Once they finished their creation, their last task was to count the amount of noodles they placed onto their watermelon. This portion of the activity enabled them to understand measurement, a precursor to their mathematics education. By arranging the objects by color and quantity, they applied their understanding of patterns, and the relationships between two different colors.

Fruits (the watermelon, specifically) are a colorful addition to anyone’s palate. Because we are always striving to improve our fine motor and color recognition skills, the first few activities were devoted to these themes. Using red and green pasta, flower foam, blunted skewers, and our thinking minds, we practiced our lacing skills! Upon introducing this activity, your little one was encouraged to identify the various colors in their environment, applying their focus to red and green items specifically. Some suggested items included Christmas trees, apples, cherries, strawberries, grass, and many more! Your little one was then encouraged to place the skewers into the flower foam, and start sliding their pasta onto them! This activity not only targeted hand eye coordination, but accessed their ability to reason and perceive relationships between different objects.