Pretend Play Food: Pizza Party

Pretend Play Food: Pizza Party

Making pizza is a fun activity that you can do with your children. They will feel honored to partake in the dinner preparations. Now you can have the fun of making pizza but not the mess. It is still a good idea to do it for real every now and then but using the Pizza Party

pretend play food

from Melissa and Doug can not only be fun but educational as well.

With the 53 toppings provided in the pretend play food pizza you can do many things that will help your child's mind to develop and learn while having fun. You can sort them according to colors and beginning sounds. Take the pieces and pattern them. Use mushrooms and pepperoni to do AB patterns and ABB patterns. Take some dice and roll the dice and have the child match the number of dots on the dice to the number of toppings they have to put on their piece. Add or loose a piece of the toppings and try to get your child to figure out how to make all the pieces of the pizza have the same number of toppings.

The pretend play food pizza pieces are cut in to six pieces and if you take one away, talk about how many toppings you lost or even how many toppings you gain by adding it back. The cutting utensil is a pizza slicer. It is a great tool where your child will have to position the slicer in between the two pieces, as with most of our cutting food, and with coordination cut the slices. It is a great thing too that they can put the pretend play food pieces back together again and start all over.

Even when your child is playing with

pretend play food

all alone or with other children, the learning will take place when they imagine and when they sort and when they share. It is an amazing toy and will be used even when they get older!

Pretend Play Food: Birthday Cake

Pretend Play Food: Birthday Cake

Every child loves birthdays, even when they are not their own. Melissa and Doug have created a

pretend play food

birthday cake that child will love as well. It has candles that you can take off and replace. It has toppings and will slice and put back together forever!

When playing with the

pretend play food

birthday cake you can extend the learning capabilities in many ways. You can talk about the number of pieces and the number of candles and do they match. You can put some candles on the cake and others not and ask the child to complete the cake set up. You can also talk about how to count things when they are in a circle. Children have a tendency to loose count when they are trying to count things that are in a circle, so work on a way to find a beginning and an end. Try talking about the shapes of the pretend play food pieces, enable them to sort the pieces together. Put one candle on the cake and talk about how many there are if you add one, two or three more. Talk about taking some of the candles off of the cake and how many you now have left. It is never too early to get the concept of loosing and adding pieces or adding and subtracting working in their brains.

As with any imaginary toy you can let your child imagine with pretend play food. Let them play "birthday party". Let them sing, and give pieces of cake to all the guests. Maybe even wrap pretend presents and work on how to politely say thank you when you open them. Even let your child wrap some blocks with some left over wrapping paper. They will love the cutting and the taping and the folding to get the present wrapped. Playing with

pretend play food

is so fun and will inspire your child's bright mind!

Pretend Play Food: Cutting Food Box

Pretend Play Food: Cutting Food Box

Our

pretend play food

is a great tool to use in enabling your child to really imagine and problem solve. They will love taking the food and pretending to cut it so that they can serve it to you. They will use problem solving skills as well when they match color, shape and use a part to whole relationship as they put it all back together again. If you are having a pretend meal with your child and the pretend play food, try to have them divide the pieces evenly between all the plates. Talk about what to do if there is left over food or if there is not enough. This begins great problem solving skills and gets their mind thinking of ways to divide what you have and be fair.

When imagining with

pretend play food

, the children can go through the steps of a meal. Talk about how the meal begins, what happens next and of course do not forget dessert. :) Take some time to explain meal manners. When your child is playing by herself, she can even start to take the pretend food and create a whole scene with other "friends" or stuffed animals coming for dinner. Encourage imagination, partake in it, and use this great wooden food to foster the growth of your little one's brain.

Solar System Floor Puzzle

Solar System Floor Puzzle

Floor

puzzles for kids

are a great way to encourage young children to problem solve and organize pieces in order to accomplish a complete picture. This floor puzzle is especially fun because it shows the solar system. Kids may not fully understand the solar system but who does? They love to hear about space and see as much as they can of what space looks like. The nice thing about this puzzle is that it gives the child a visual of space and even has the names of the planets on there as well. If you have a child that is visual and learns things by touching or looking at them, then this is a great way to teach them the planets. They can then picture the location of the planet and the way it looks as the recall the planet's name. Puzzles for kids are fun, no doubt, why not get a puzzle that will help them learn too. You will be amazed at the questions that result as you work with your child or allow your child to work independently on this puzzle.

Puzzles for kids

can create numerous opportunities to Inspire Your child's Mind! Give them a try!