Where Food Comes From: Teach Your Toddler Tip Three

Although we are lucky enough to have grown our entire summer vegetable supply in our garden, not everyone has a garden. But being reliant on the supermarket to buy your vegetables does not mean that your toddler is unable to learn about where the food comes from. When you are shopping there are lots of things you can do to help your toddlers learn about the food you are buying.

Let your toddler pick out the fruit and vegetables for you. Garden Girl loves selecting apples of various types. Some days she will only choose red ones, other days shiny ones and sometimes she will choose the biggest. She also counts out my carrots and picks out the biggest broccolli. If I am not following a recipe I will let her choose the type of vegetables, telling her to pick out three different vegetables, or three green vegetables, or choose one vegetable that grows above ground and one that grows under the soil. Garden Boy will always join in and makes Garden Girl giggle when he gets it wrong or sends an apple rolling across the supermarket floor. I have to watch him though, as he is liable to take a big bite out the vegetables, testing them out before he buys. Still, most of the vegetables from our garden have munch marks in them, so why not those from the supermarket? It just makes them more authentic!

We usually buy frozen peas and tinned beans, but if you don't grow your own it is worth buying some fresh peas or broad beans in the pod every now and then. Our Little Garden Helpers love podding them for me while I chop the rest of the vegetables and they get to see what they looked like on the plant. Around Christmas time there are usually sprouts still attached to the plant stalks in the supermarkets and there are always tomatoes still on the vine on the shelves, so look out for them and occassionally buy them like this so you can explain why they look like this.

Supermarkets also sell herbs growing in their pots so try to buy these rather than the ready cut ones, or the dried ones, although many herbs are easy to grow from seed on a window sill, in small pots, so spend less and let your toddler plant their own.

I also frequently take our Little Garden Helpers to the garden centre for nothing more than an afternoon's entertainment. They love it, as there is lots to see (especially near Christmas when they have fabulous Christmas displays) and if you are trying to teach your toddler about food you can just seek out the vegetable section and show them what the plants look like in the early stages, before they hit the supermarket shelves.

And the best thing about getting your toddler to help with the shopping? They stay happy and engaged while you shop instead of feeling like they are being dragged round and when they don't want to eat their food later you can remind them that they chose it and it might just encourage them to tuck in.

Where Food Comes From; Teach Your Toddler Tip Two

It is Friday again already and time for another tip to get toddlers learning about food. In our house we have spent much of the week cooking vast quantities of vegetables we dug up at the weekend, so it only seems approriate that I talk a little bit about ways to get your toddler involved in food preparation.

The vast majority of the meals we prepare have vegetables chopped into small chunks and served in a sauce, whether its a pasta sauce, curry, casserole or stew. Most of these meals get wolfed down without a second thought but the trouble with this sort of meal is that toddlers have no idea what the ingredients actually are. When they help to make the meal they get to see the vegetables before they are chopped up and know what they are eating.

One of the things our Little Garden Helpers enjoy doing most in the kitchen is washing the vegetables. I usually put a washing up bowl on the floor with some tea towels underneath to soak up any spills, with a few spare tea towels on hand to catch any larger spills. This is great for their learning as they see the carrots with the leaves on the end and the potatoes covered in soil. They love splashing in the water and chasing runaway potatoes across the kitchen floor.

Garden Girl also loves helping to chop vegetables. She sees it as a very grown up job and treats it as a real responsibilty, which makes her feel like she is contributing properly to the meal making. With the softer things like mushrooms or avocado a blunt toddler knife is sufficient to cut through, but for harder vegetables like carrots I will boil or steam them whole first. Once they are cool Garden Girl will chop them up while I deal with the meat and then I'll add them to the dish a bit later than usual to get warmed through. Don't worry about losing nutrients by pre boiling the vegetables; just use the water for the stock or add it to the sauce and simmer for longer or add cornflour to thicken it.

Another great idea for the older toddler which I picked up from CBeebies 'I Can Cook' is using toddler scissors to chop some vegetables like spring onions or just ripping things like sweet peppers apart. (And if you haven't seen this show, I would recommend it for some fabulous ideas on meals your child can cook pretty much from start to finish).

If you mash potatoes or carrots and swedes, get your toddler to help. Garden Boy loves the opportunity to crush things and he gets to see how the consistency and texture of the vegetables have changed. Garden Boy will also quite happily put peelings and chopped leaves in the bin for me (or on some days he will scatter them over the kitchen floor to create a lovely carpet of greenery) but it keeps him occupied while Garden Girl chops as he isn't yet controlled enough to help her.

Garden Girl takes a lot of pride in her cooking and loves it when she can tell Daddy she made the dinner. She is also a lot more eager to try something new if she has helped to cook it. The kitchen can become a little messy but I have a lot more fun cooking when our Little Helpers are involved. There are so many more giggles than usual and making dinner becomes an enjoyable activity rather than an everyday chore. Only Garden Dad might bear a slight frown when I hand him a broom on his return from work, though our Little Helpers are surprisingly eager to help out with this too.

Where Food Comes From: Teach Your Toddler Tip One

Having read the results of the McCain survey which revealed that one in five children aged between 7 and 11 do not know that potatoes grow in the ground, I have decided to write a series of posts with ideas on how to teach your toddler the origins of food. We are very lucky that we have a garden large enough to contain raised beds where we grow our own vegetables. Our Little Garden Helpers are in the garden most days helping us plant, dig and harvest a variety of vegetables and as a result they are in no doubt as to where their food comes from. But not everyone has a garden. These Friday tips therefore are aimed at everyone, with or without a garden.

Tip One: Forage for Free Food

Put on your woolly hat, wellies and warm coat and head outside for a walk, keeping your eyes open for fruits, nuts and edible leaves. There are lots to find, all year round, if you really look for them. Even in the cities, just head for a large park and there will be food for picking. You have probably all been blackberry picking at some point and there might still be a few late ripening berries out there now, but the best thing at this time of year are the Sweet Chestnuts. Your toddler will love throwing sticks high into the trees to try and knock the prickly round cases onto the floor and then will have even more fun stamping on the prickly balls (with thick boots of course) to crack them open and reveal two or three sweet chesnuts hidden inside. Just make sure they wear thick gloves so they don't prick their fingers. Let them eat some raw there and then, a great reward for all their hard work but make sure they fill their backpacks with lots to take home for roasting.

If you are brave enough there are lots of fungi growing at this time of year and with the wierd and wonderful array of colours and shapes these are fascinating for toddlers. I must confess that I am not brave enough to pick wild mushrooms just in case I get the identification wrong and I poison my whole family, but we still look out for them when we are walking and both my Garden Helpers love looking at the strange formations. I always tell them that the mushrooms we buy at the supermarket once grew under a tree just like the ones we see when we are out, but that some varieties can make people feel sick so it best to let experts pick them. I am also always telling them both not to pick and eat enything unless they have checked with me first just to make sure they won't get a sore tummy.

The best thing about foraging for food is that its free; both the food and the day out. And while they are having fun your toddlers will be learning how things grow. Once you have started foraging you will always be on the look out and there is more out there than you might have thought. If you think you might want to give it a go there is a brilliant little pocket sized book called Food for Free by Richard Mabey (ISBN 9870007183036) which will help you identify edible plants, trees and fungi, as well as having a handy list of what to look out for each month. We take this with us whenever we go for a walk now.

Have fun foraging.