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Invite your child to construct a little homemade book with drawings and descriptions of vegetables. The activity helps him pay attention to detail and encourages writing practice. Suggest he do one page every day or every couple of days until he is satisfied. Then collect the pages and bind them at the side to form a book.
What You Need:
Half-sheets of plain paper, construction paper, lined writing paper, glue, scissors, lead and colored pencils, hole punch, yarn. Also, an assortment of vegetables such as lettuce, carrot, beet, radish, celery, pepper, tomato, potato, onion, garlic, green beans, peas, pumpkin, zucchini, cabbage, leek, corn, or eggplant
Activity:
With your child, examine one type of vegetable, for example a carrot. Look at, feel, and taste the carrot. Discuss your observations.
Invite him to draw a picture of the carrot on a half-sheet of plain paper.
For a Younger Child: Write the word carrot on a sheet of lined writing paper. Have your child practice writing the word several times. Then have him choose his best attempt, cut it out, and glue it beneath the picture. For an Older Child: Have your child write the word carrot beneath the picture, and then write a description of the vegetable—what it looks, tastes, and smells like, where it grows, or a favorite recipe it’s used in—on a half-sheet of lined paper. Glue this on a second half-sheet of plain paper. (The next vegetable picture will go on the back of this page.)
When five to ten pages are done, add a colorful construction paper cover and punch three holes down the side. Older children arrange pages so the picture is on the left and the written page is glued onto the right facing page.
Bind the pages together with yarn and have your child write “My Vegetable Book” on the cover.
Invite him to decorate the cover with more drawings or vegetable pictures cut from catalogs or magazines.
Variation:
If your child is only interested in making one page, have him cut out and glue his picture onto a large piece of construction paper. Glue on the writing. Invite him to decorate it with more vegetable drawings, and then hang it on the wall.
