Friday 20 February 2009

Snacks

My mother in law is a lovely woman  and often sends us food parcels from the wilds of Wakayama just in case we can't buy tea or honey on the out skirts of Tokyo! The problem is that, the last few parcels she has sent contain boxes of snacks for Ebi-kun, chocolate and biscuit type snacks. I made the mistake of letting him have them at snack time and so now that is all he wants. Most of the time Ebi-kun is a good eater, he will try ANYTHING and enjoys his food - he is painfully slow at eating though, a 3 hour lunch would suit him just fine! I have noticed though, since he has been on his 'bad' snack kick that he isn't eating well at meal times, so yesterday I decided it was time we had a talk. I explained about healthy and unhealthy foods and why they are that way. Then I made two labels and put them on the table and asked him to get some things out of the draw/fridge and sort them as he did it.

He did quite well with it all, he was confused with the jam because it has fruit in it but then we talked about the sugar content. I am not anti chocolate (in fact the opposite is more the truth) so we talked about eating these things in moderation and that it is OK to have them once in a while and we also touched on the subject of marketing, goods having popular kids characters on them and how these goods are often the unhealthy ones. He concluded that the milk should have Doremon on it because he is a cat and cats drink milk and milk is healthy!
Then I asked him to prepare his snack by himself

He picked dried soy beans, raisins and strawberries, three things because he is 3, in the 3 dish, with 3 strawberries. (Do your kids do this?)
We also did some work, language work is the favourite still, he got out the sound pouches and then started to spell out the words - that was before the zebra and grasshopper had a fight and then the praying mantis had to ride the skateboard to the police station!
Ebi-kun was super excited this morning because we woke up to snow, sadly it has turned to rain and has almost all gone already, he wants to make a snowman so much, perhaps those of you will loads of the white stuff could send us a box full each and then we can make one :o)

13 comments:

  1. What a wonderful learning experience for your son!
    My package arrived today - thank you! I love it all & can't wait to get at creating with the fabrics.

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  2. I love this post! What a smart and fun sorting exercise. :)My dad mails us food, too - and, yes, all food that we can easily find in our town. Nothing fancy, just stuff like macaroni and cheese. Charming, though, right?

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  3. What a great educational experience!

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  4. I would be really interested in knowing the definitions you used to explain about healthy and unhealthy foods. We have had a talk about it, but nothing seems to have taken root!

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  5. Nancy = I am glad they arrived safely, let me know if you blog about what you made with them :o)

    Swati- Generally, I said that anything with a high fat or sugar content was unhealthy, I didn't want to make it too complicated. I said that all fresh fruit and veg is healthy and things like cheese are in the middle because the calcium in cheese is good but the fat is bad. I did go on to say that some fats are good and some are bad, he wanted examples so I gave olive oil as a goodie and butter/lard as a baddie. The having a little bit of baddie stuff is OK seemed to sink in.
    He remembered a lot of it because he was repeating it all to me today.

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  6. great idea on the healthy/unhealthy lesson. And yes, my children do the age thing. They tell me, please lie down with me tonight for 6 minutes because I am 6. Or can I just have 6 grapes because I am 6.

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  7. That was such a great idea!
    I enjoy all your post, they
    are so interesting and fun.
    Thank you for the link...

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  8. We talk about that all the time in my house - but we use the ters "anytime" and "sometimes" foods. My MIL gives my kids crap foods all the time and since the kids are only over there "sometimes", that makes it easier to describe why we dont get to have those foods "anytime". We also talk about food having a little or a lot of "sugar bugs" who eat teeth. Love your blog - I homeschool my 8DD, 5DS, 3DS and 10 month DD. Hello from Washington State!

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  9. Did you know I live about twenty minutes drive from Wakayama! You will have to visit me next time you come down!

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  10. I'll hold you to that! Do you know Monica in Wakayama, she has invited me out too - one of these days, I'm not sure when my next lot of in-law torture will be!

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  11. I do know Monica!! - she has a fantastic large deck which I am sure would hold us for some evening cocktails one day! pink gin?

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  12. Oh My! now you are making me WANT to go and visit the in-laws!

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  13. Hi Jo! I'm going to post about this over at Dollar Store Mom - I am using the photo of the two piles of food. I hope that's all right!

    -heather

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