Everyday Items as Awesome Toys | Green peas | 1special..

blog Tanvi March 2, 2019

Everyday Items as Awesome Toys – GREEN PEAS

Everyday Items as Awesome Toys, The awesomeness of common items in play should not go unnoticed! In this series, we will explore one such common item each time and discuss five different ways to play with it.

This article is exploring everyday item – VEGETABLES (PEAS)

Recently I tried playing with peas with my little one , and I was ecstatic to see the joy in her eyes! She not only enjoyed but learn so much with these GREEN SMALL BALLS……

FIND ME

In a bowl of green peas hide small / miniature toys like small cars, animal figurines etc and allow the child find them. There is a burst of language learning with this activity. Let the child describe what treasure he/she has discovered from the bowl. Ask simple questions about the toy, ” What did you find? ” ” What is the colour of the car” . Depending on the age of the child, you can frame questions and engage him with meaningful conversation around the discovered toy. Let the child express his excitement and suggest would they do with that toy!! This is also a sensory rich activity.

2. SO MANY

Allow your child to sit with you and peel the pea pods. Involve them. Start with one pea pod at a time. Your child will love seeing so many peas inside one green stick ( yes that’s what my baby calls the pea pod. ). Model correct language. Let them discover what is there inside. Teach them how to pluck one pea at a time, hold the peas and put them in a bowl. Make the activity more meaningful by introducing more language “ oh !! look the pea fell down !! uh-oh!. Lets pick it up and put it back in the bowl” or “ Lets open the pea open !!” or “ ohh ! the pea pod is empty” or “ wow we found a small green colour ball inside !!”

3. PICK & DROP

Let the child pick peas one by one from one bowl and put them in another bowl. This is great for developing fine motor skills. Notch up the difficulty and provide forceps or baby tongs to pick the peas. Further you can challenge your child to sort out peas from a bowl of peas, carrot and other vegetable pieces.

Everyday Items as Awesome Toys

4. COLOUR IT UP
Draw a pea pod on paper and allow your child to colour it green. You can also print pea colouring pages.

5. MATHS WITH PEAS

Doing Math with peas can be so much fun! Count the number of peas in the pod. Allow your child to understand that bigger pods contain more peas while smaller ones have lesser. You can also talk about fat and thin pea pods and predict the size and explore the differences.

6. PEA CRAFT

Hands on craft always engages children. You can scrunch up green kite paper into small balls to make craft peas, and stick them on a paper pod cut out with green craft paper. Another simple idea is by Little Family Fun. com . Picture below.