A sensory activity on the vegetable garden. The children will become the farmers. They will be able to plant vegetables, harvest them, sell them at markets and/or even offer to cook them.
Materials :
- vegetables in polymer clay (or use vegetable toys)
- small baskets (see here for the tuto)
- small plastic trees (from a game of my kids)
- kinetic sand
- plastic tray
- a basket or small box
How to do it:
Vegetables
To realize vegetables, I used several colors of polymer clay (green, purple, white, pink, red, orange). Below two examples of vegetables:
Tomato:
1. Make a ball of red polymer clay.
2. Make a green cap to put on the top of the red ball that represents the stem and sepals.
Radish:
1. Make a white, a pink and a green ball.
2. Glue the 3 balls together.
3. Roll under your finger to get the shape of a radish.
4. Cut out the green part to obtain the leaves
According the type of clay used, the vegetables are to be dried by air or in the oven (for me it was 110°C- 30min)
The vegetable garden
1. Place kinetic sand in a tray.
2. Add small plastic trees and add fruits or vegetables to be picked (here: tomatoes and eggplants).
3. Put the other vegetables in the sand (here: salad, leeks, radishes, carrots) leaving the leaves appear.
4. Give a basket to the child who will then be able to start the harvest.
The market place :
The child places the harvested vegetables and fruits in a larger basket (I made a paper basket but a small box works too).
The child can use it as a market place and can sell the vegetables.
Different games can then take place:
Selling:
Each vegetable have a different price. For example, 1 tomato is 1 kiss, 1 salad is 3 kisses, etc.. So how many kisses do I buy all of these?
This is a great exercise to work on addition with the child while having fun.
Recipes:
You buy 3 carrots and a leek then ask to the seller:
"I don't know what I could make for dinner with this... What would you suggest?"
The child might suggest a recipe: "a leek roll with ham and carrots as a side dish. But to make it better, you would also need lemon juice, but I don't have any to sell."
The child will have to put himself in a situation and imagine. This can be quite funny because sometimes he will give recipes that are disconcerting to say the least. Sometimes he will reproduce a recipe that he likes and that he is used to eating.
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