A Trip To The Store

I have been watching Jamie Oliver's show on the Food Network in which he is working with a school district in West Virginia to provide healthier school lunches. In the course of his educating the children on better food choices, he spent time in a kindergarten class. He brought in foods such as celery, eggplant, tomatoes, and potatoes to see if the children could identify each one. You guessed it. They could not. Why is that? One reason is that no one had talked to these children about these foods. Perhaps there was not money in the family budget for fresh vegetables. Or maybe processed foods have taken over our society to the point where families don't cook fresh vegetables anymore. Or maybe these kiddos just needed a little instruction.

Once Jamie had attempted this lesson with the class, the teacher decided to teach the children about vegetables. Within two weeks, when Jamie went back to the same class, all of the children could identify all of the vegetables. It was a beautiful thing to see.

To help your child identify fruits and/or vegetables and to develop vocabulary, do the following: when you are in the grocery store, have your child name each item you are adding to the cart. To help with letter and sound recognition, a pre-cursor to reading, sound out the first sound in the word and name that letter sound. Or you can say, "Let's find a vegetable that begins with B". Pick up broccoli." Yes, broccoli. Broccoli begins with B."

Even your older children will benefit from this exercise. You can greatly expand their vocabulary by choosing vegetables or fruits like artichokes, cauliflower, pomegranate, or mango to talk about. All children love to learn new words, especially if they are big words that are fun to say. Who knows, your child may even ask to sample some of the food you talk about.