Mealtime Activity: 5 Years

Ask your child to help you unload the dishwasher or put hand-washed dishes away. He can practice grouping like items together on the counter (nesting bowls, lining up cups together, etc.). Ask him to tell you how many he has in each group and ask, “Which group has more?'” See if he can tell you how many without actually counting the items one at a time. For cabinets that he can safely reach, he can work on visual-spatial organization by helping you rearrange them to make room for new dishes. All of these tasks help strengthen him thinking skills! Opening and closing low cabinet doors, squatting to pick up items and unload the dishwasher are also all good for strengthening large muscles.

Possible Intervention Strategies & Supports

• Children may need visual cues to remember where things belong in the kitchen (and in other places around the house for that matter). Labeling storage spaces with photos is great way to do this. If you are comfortable taping a small picture on the outside of your cabinets, snap some photos of the contents of your cabinets and drawers (e.g., silverware, Tupperware, pots and pans, glasses, etc.).

• To help reinforce an understanding of object use, ask your child to tell you what he does with the items while he’s putting them away (e.g., cup-- she drinks with it; spoon—she scoops food with it to eat).

• Shopping for meals is also an educationally rich activity (matching, early word recognition, counting, food categories etc.)! When you take your child grocery shopping, give him index cards with pictures of items you will need to buy (using stickers or pictures you have found in magazines or sale ads). Your child can help make the cards before you go. While at the store, have him help look for the items on their cards. In addition to being educational and helpful to you, this can keep him engaged so that he’s likely to become whiny during the shopping trip!

Tips

Pairing a photo with a printed word (handwritten or computer-generated) is a great way to reinforce early literacy. Label the photos you use in your house to help your child learn some new words!

Family Handout

Click here to download an editable one-page handout of this age range's mealtime activity, interventions, and tips.