This art idea is open-ended and will allow everyone to participate.
Read: Eating Your Way Through the Alphabet
Show children real foods they will be seeing in the book. Discuss shape, color, etc.
After each food, add a comment about why it is healthy.
Art:
Garden Mural
The preschool indoor garden mural lets you bring the garden inside. Outside gardens can be labor intensive and let's face it, it takes time to experience food growing! Preschoolers can learn about how food grows and see their garden 'grow' quickly with the indoor garden mural. Create the mural with poster board or a large roll of paper, markers or crayons, and pictures of plant foods. Display the indoor garden mural and add to it each time you have a food theme, talk about food, or eat a new food at snacktime.
What You Need
Long roll of paper or large poster board
Markers or crayons
Pictures of plant foods - fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, nuts
How to Make the Indoor Garden Mural
Step One:
Prepare the background for your indoor garden. Draw two lines across the length of the paper/poster, one to represent the top of the 'underground' part of your garden, the other to represent the horizon. Add a few trees, shrubs and fields.
Step Two:
Use light crayons or pencils to color in the various parts of the mural. Brown underground, green grass, blue sky, green shrubs, etc.
Step Three:
Add pictures of food in their proper place in the garden. For instance, carrots will be placed below the ground with the carrot top above the ground, apples will be placed in a tree, berries will be placed in a shrub, grains will be placed in the field.
Using the Indoor Garden Mural
Create the entire garden all at once by having a variety of food pictures available. Hand out pictures to preschoolers one at a time to place in the garden.
Or, watch your garden grow by exploring foods one at a time throughout the year. For each food lesson, place one or more pictures of the food in the garden. As the preschool year goes by, your garden will grow and grow!
Use the Indoor Garden Mural with any preschool food theme or with the Preschool Food Game - How Does it Grow? and the What's In Season Calendar for Preschoolers
Other book titles:
The Carrot Seed
Ruth Krauss, Crockett Johnson (Illustrator)
A classic story about a little boy who plants a seed, then waits patiently for his prize-winning carrot to grow.
Blueberries for Sal
Robert McCloskey
Sal can't seem to pick the berries as fast as she eats them in this gentle tale of mothers, cubs, and blueberries.
Click here Pregnant? Click Here
Chicken Soup with Rice: A Book of Months
Maurice Sendak
"Each month is gay, each season nice, when eating chicken soup with rice."
Color Crunch
Charles Reasoner
A colorful food guide for pre-schoolers, complete with bite marks on the pages that feature food.
Growing Colors
Bruce McMillan
Bruce McMillan uses his camera to invite young children into gardens and orchards to discover nature's beautiful colors.
I Eat Fruit
Hannah Tofts, Rupert Horrox (Illustrator)
This book introduces children to fruits and vegetables but also provides an artful impact by placing a photograph against a dramatic background.
I Eat Vegetables
Hannah Tofts (Illustrator)
A colorful introduction to fruits and vegetables that allows children to see which need to be peeled, which have seeds, which have pits, etc.
Jamberry
Bruce Degen (Illustrator)
A boy and a bear romp through Berryland, inviting the reader to celebrate in this berry-filled hunt.
Lunch
Denise Fleming (Illustrator)
A mouse chomps his way through this clever book of turnips, carrots, corn, peas, berries, grapes, apples and watermelon.
No Milk!
Jennifer Ericsson, Oran Eitan (Illustrator)
A charming book about a city boy who tries almost everything to get milk out of a cow.
Pancakes, Pancakes
Eric Carle (Illustrator)
This story takes the reader through the preparation of a pancake breakfast: getting flour from the mill, an egg from the hen, milk from the cow, butter churned from cream, and firewood for the stove!
Peanut Butter and Jelly: A Play Rhyme
Nadine Bernard Westcott (Illustrator)
Two children create a table-sized sandwich.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Eric Carle
The caterpillar eats his way through the week (and book), before changing into a beautiful butterfly.
To Market, To Market
Anne Miranda, Janet Stevens (Illustrator)
Rhythmic and fun, this story adapts a traditional children's song into amusing chaos in our contemporary world.