January 19-23, 2015
Little Pea Discovery Centers
Eat your peas, please! This week in Nutrition Expedition, we read the book Little Pea, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. It's a story about a family of peas, and how "Little Pea" must eat candy for dinner (if you're a pea, you have to eat candy for dinner every night) before he can have his dessert of spinach. The children love this book, and thought it hilarious how the pea family has unusual eating practices, much different from our own! We discussed how it probably wouldn't be a good idea for us to eat candy for dinner; what a tummy-ache that would be!
After the story, I had three discovery centers set up at the tables. The first was an exploration table, where I had fresh pea pods, safety scissors, tweezers, and magnifying glasses. The children were encouraged to explore the pea pods; they cut them open to see what was inside, investigated them with the magnifying glasses, and picked out the peas with tweezers (some of the children even ate their discoveries!). The second table was a sensory table, where they could make their own Little Peas out of green play dough. They had a lot of fun squishing the dough and creating their own pea families! And finally, the third table was a crafting table, where they used glue sticks and pea pod cutouts to create their own pea pods. What fun we had!
For the infants, we read the story, and I brought in a stuffed pea pod. I showed them how to open the zipper to reveal the little baby peas inside. They had a good time passing them back and forth while we sang the song "Peas Porridge Hot":
Peas porridge hot,
Peas porridge cold.
Peas porridge in the pot, nine days old!
Some like it hot,
Some like it cold.
Some like it in the pot, nine days old!
Here is a link to Little Pea, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal:
