Toddler Vegetable Exploration

We have been talking about healthy food, and one of our most enjoyable activities was painting with vegetables! 

More on that in a second. Three other fun things we did were (1) go grocery shopping! The kids loved pushing around this little cart and loading it up with pretend food. They also decided to place a baby in the seat.

(2) vegetables on the flannel board. We talked about all the vegetables as the kids happily stuck them on the board, and they enjoyed making connections between these realistic representations of vegetables and the pictures of vegetables in our books.

And (3) stamping some Green Grapes (for our alphabet book – coming soon!) with wine corks

But back to the real vegetables! I asked parents if they would be willing to donate any for us to paint with, and I was blessed to receive a potato, a green pepper, carrots, broccoli, and celery!

The students were very interested in touching and smelling the vegetables. They examined them closely, and we talked about how they felt. 

The potato was labeled “rough,” while the pepper was “smooth.”

After awhile, I cut the potato and pepper in half. We felt the smooth inside of the potato, noticing that it was white instead of brown, like the outside. 

We looked closely at all the seeds in the pepper (I removed them before painting).

This carrot was being “dipped” in the open half of the green pepper.

And then it was time to paint! I like to reuse those Styrofoam vegetable trays to hold paint (and how appropriate for this project!), and the carrot and orange paint are in a recycled applesauce cup.

They were so focused on this activity! We did it one at a time, and I stayed close by to supervise.

I filled the green paint up too high, so the pepper and broccoli turned out a little gloppy, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying the activity!

The children had to adjust their grips to hold all these different vegetables – the large, heavy potato versus the long skinny carrot, for instance.

It was a huge hit. They enjoyed exploring real vegetables, were introduced to the concept of healthy food, and had fun playing with paint too.

And look how beautiful they turned out!

Valentine fun will be coming this way soon!