Aloha from na keiki o Hawai'i. My preschool special education class provides early intervention services to qualifying special needs children with a range of disabling conditions, ages 3 to 5 years. Most of my students struggle to speak and be understood, and several have fine motor challenges as well. My school is located in a predominantly rural, low-income neighborhood with a considerable portion of the children of Hawaiian and/or Pacific Island ancestry.
Our classroom cheer sums it up: "You too, we too, we all love preschool!" We are a group of actively involved adults-teacher, aide, and therapists, and children working together in our hands-on learning environment.
My Project
"Stop playing with your food!" surely everyone has been told this at some point in their lives, and/or has said it, probably to a young child. I confess that I have been at both ends of that statement.
However if you want children to learn about something--let them play with it!
Unfortunately, the few remainders of our twenty year old collection are ragged and consist primarily of mini plastic hamburgers, hot dogs, bananas, and, oddly, lots of ice cream cones and cookies-not the best of diets. Needless to say, it's long overdue that they get replaced.
The multicultural play set will have some foods familiar to my musubi-eating keiki as well as introduce them to foods from other regions. While shopping food basket and the real-size sets will have selections that are more diverse and representative of the updated food pyramid. I'm hoping that by pretending to cook and eat these healthier selections the children will become familiar with a greater variety and be more receptive to actually eating some of these foods during our "real" cooking activities and at meal time.
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