Teachable Trail Mix

     Our Parent Educator (Parents as Teachers) gave us a visit the other day, and as always, came with something fun and educational for my daughter to do. Parents as Teachers is a free, voluntary program that supports parents through providing helpful information on observing and encouraging their child's development.

     While in the past, our Parent Educator has brought blocks, crayons, and other developmentally driven items, today was a little different. She brought food! Of course, my daughter was eager to participate in this. One by one, she pulled out small snack bags of different food items to make trail mix. But as always, there was much to learn from common snack items that most of us have in our homes. 

     Stick pretzels, round pretzels, Cheez-its (with letters on them, can you believe that?!), colored marshmallows, mini M&M's, animal crackers, and raisins made up the trail mix. Before Ava could eat to her heart's content, we talked about concepts such as soft and hard, shapes, colors, and what does and does not fit inside the round circle pretzel. We sorted items, grouped some together, counted, identified letters, colors, and shapes, and distinguished between salty and sweet. Ava opened up each Ziploc bag, working on fine motor skills, poured the item from the bag into the bowl, and stirred the food items with a spoon. At the end, she was given a small Dixie cup to scoop up the trail mix with and put into 4 small snack bags.

     If you have young children at home, and have some of these snack food items in your pantry, think about what they can learn from them. Instead of just putting crackers and raisins in a bowl for snack, how can you teach your children something about what they are eating? Many concepts were taught, and because she knew she would get to eat the snack at the end, she was interested and engaged in the activity. Trail Mix isn't just good for your tummy; it's good for your mind as well!