Activity |
Adaptations |
Family Partnership |
Opportunities |
Science |
Plant an indoor or outdoor garden, encouraging children to complete tasks aligned with their specific interests, strengths, and needs. Gardening introduces children to life science( life cycles, what living things need to grow) and to scientific processes( making predictions, observing changes over time, collecting and recording data). |
Offer tools designed for small hands. Adapt the height of the garden to support children who use mobility supports like wheelchairs and walkers. Label plants in all of the languages spoken in your setting. |
Encourage families to talk about where their food comes from. Offer conversation prompts, such as“ Do apples grow on trees or in the ground? What about carrots?”;“ Where does milk come from? What about eggs?” |
Technology |
Use a camera to photograph each stage of a recipe. Print the photos, and ask children to reflect on the process by arranging the photos in the correct order. |
Include children’ s home languages in printed recipe materials. |
Share the recipe with families, complete with photos from each stage, and encourage them to make a snack at home. Ask families to contribute recipes that you can try in your setting. |
Engineering |
Use a small slide or ramp in the block area to test and compare the speed at which whole fruits and vegetables move down it. See what changes you can make to alter the speed. For example, will an apple roll faster or slower if children build a container for it? Clean and eat the foods at snack time to avoid any waste! |
Select the location of the activity, the food items being tested, and the height of the ramp or slide based on children’ s motor abilities. For example, use a wider, lower ramp with lighter items to support children with low muscle tone or limited mobility. |
Encourage families to work with their children to invent a carrier for fruits and vegetables. They can make the activity more challenging by asking their children to invent a carrier that’ s hands-free. |
Arts |
Encourage children to use different art materials( paint, clay, construction paper) to illustrate their favorite foods. Support open-ended creativity: There is no one right way to engage in art play! |
Consider and meet children’ s sensory and positioning needs. For example, you might tape butcher paper to a work surface( the table or wall) to encourage adequate personal space. Offer a variety of textured materials to paint with. |
Share children’ s art with families. Add prompts that families can use to ask children about their work, such as“ How do you feel about your art?”;“ What did you use to make these marks on your paper?” |
Mathematics |
Set up a grocery store in the dramatic play area, and scaffold children to count, sort, and classify the pretend food there. |
Adjust this activity based on each child’ s strengths and areas for growth. For example, children should understand the concepts of same and different before you ask them to classify foods by type. |
Ask families about meal planning in their homes. Offer a few math-related ideas. These could include classifying foods based on whether they’ re canned, frozen, or fresh or investigating the concept of parts and whole by asking children to cover half of their plate with fruits and vegetables. |