Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Free play food

Remember when I carted home all those Country Living magazines from a free box?

Andrew was so excited to cut these play foods for his little sister. He even glued them on index cards for strength. We spent an entire afternoon clipping and cooking.

How's that for triple recycling?

I shamelessly stole this idea from one of my favorite blogs, Chasing Cheerios. Melissa shares a steady stream of Montessori activities, many from free or cheap materials. That reminds me: I need to pick up some bargain pencil pouches for toddler activity bags!

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

WHat a great link. I can't wait to go over and browse!

Essential Oil Premier University said...

What a wonderful "green" idea!!

Blessings,

Sher

Mary Ellen said...

What a great idea! Thanks for sharing blog link!

Mary Ellen

Cat said...

What a neat idea! My 2 YO will just love this. Thanks for the link.

Karen said...

That is awesome! I still have a pile of felt to make our own play food; it's on my goals for Christmas gifts. Thanks for the link to the blog -- my son starts Montessori preschool in just a few days and I'm so excited!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the link to another wonderful blog. What a neat idea for the younger kids.

I have been taking some Montessori classes to 'add' to my day care operation. I will be keeping this idea in mind for our food classes. Roxie

Kelly said...

I did this when my son was little and covered them with clear contact paper. This would make a nice gift for one sibling to make for another for Christmas or Birthday !
I also made him a construction paper place mat with the proper places for forks , knife and spoon and covered it with clear contact paper .
These lasted for many years .

Melissa said...

Thanks for linking to my blog :) That's a good idea to glue the food to index cards. I think I'll try that, too. O LOVES her paper plate food, but I'm sure she like to be able to rearrange the food, too :)

Anonymous said...

Andrew is a sweet bubby! This reminds me---I was at a library book sale the other day and an older lady was bemoaning the fact that she couldn't find anyone to take her stacks of old National Geographics (I would've taken them but my hubby would not be happy if I bring any more stacks of reading material into our house!) Anyway, the lady said, "Don't children cut pictures out of magazines anymore?" and another lady answered, "No, I guess they just print them off the internet." (!) Funny how the simplest things are becoming "remember whens". Good job on this activity, Meredith.

Abbi said...

Another idea would be to attach them to washed styrafoam trays for sturdiness.

Abbi@ Proverbs31living.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Andrew, you are so cool. Elise and little brother are just going to love you more and more.

Great idea! I remember cutting out Record Album covers from the old Columbia record club adverts for my Barbies.

deb meyers

Sheila said...

That's really cute!

I did the same thing when I was little and made a "play library" for my dolls. You know all those Scholastic book club brochures you have around your house? They're all pictures of book covers.

I cut those out, and then stapled paper to them so they looked like little books. I'd even put due dates in the back and keep track of which doll took out which book.

It's geeky, I know. But it was fun!

Sheila Gregoire
Visit To Love, Honor and Vacuum today!

Anonymous said...

We have done the same thing since our oldest was little--any cookie boxes that come with nice clear photos of the food, or magazines with ads, or even tattered cookbooks (yard-saled) with colour photos--we've used them all; sometimes just glued to paper plates, sometimes done individually, occasionally covered with sticky plastic if we had any. The most coveted photos were always the ones that were an actual photo of a plate of food.The ones we did years ago have still held up quite well, and the kids have had a lot of fun playing restaurant with their plates of curry, tofu stirfry, fancy desserts and so on.

Jen said...

Just L-O-V-E this idea. Thanks for sharing what you've found. A silent reader here for some time and wanted you to know that you are my mentor for making the meager things around me beautiful.

Jamie - Family Focused Fun said...

What a cute idea!! I'll have to remember this one!

Lizz @ Yes, and So is My Heart said...

Perfect timing! I love this idea and our play food has mysteriously disappered. Oh, and that reminds me, I should probably check the vents. You never know what you mind find hiding behind those vent covers.