Home > Preschool Ideas > Vegetable Prints and DIY Shadow Matching Game

Vegetable Prints and DIY Shadow Matching Game

Welcome to In The Garden week with the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp – don’t worry if you haven’t signed up there is still time – you can sign up via our Virtual Book Club Summer Camp page and you will receive all the planners to date as well as the 3 following weeks planners, next week is one of my favourite themes.

Today’s Post is Sponsored by Green Kids Crafts – Digital Discovery Boxes.

Pick and Print vegetables bring Oliver's Vegetable by Vivian French Alive for Kids through the Virtual Book Club for Kids Summer Camp

We spend a lot of time in the garden and one of our favourite books to read related to the subject is Oliver’s Vegetables by Vivian French. As a parent of a fussy eater we love how the Grandpa in the book challenges Oliver who loves to eat Chips (Fries) and just chips to eat what ever he pulls up from the vegetable garden each day of the week.

Oliver's Vegetables

We got picking vegetables for a fun activity for toddlers and older. Whether you are picking from the garden, market or Fridge (we did a little of all of them) it doesn’t matter how you go about picking the vegetables but it’s perfect to talk about different types of vegetables that grow and that you can eat.

After choosing a selection of vegetables (and some fruit at T’s instance) we set about chopping them up. T and I worked together me holding the knife with her to chop the fruit and vegetables into shapes – we cut a carrot to show the circle and then the length of the carrot to show the cross section. With an apple we cut it to reveal the pips and then into a segment. At the bottom of the fridge we found some potatoes which we cut up to form circles, ovals and then I very carefully cut out a square. We also used some radishes from the garden which produces lovely circles when cut.

Pick and Print vegetables bring Oliver's Vegetable by Vivian French Alive for Kids through the Virtual Book Club for Kids Summer Camp

Setting up an invitation to create with ready -mixed paints on paper plates and the selection of vegetables I let T go about printing onto small sheets of paper – whilst she printed we were able to talk about the shapes that were formed the vegetables where they grew and the colours that were formed especially when she did her second print with another colour of paint.

Pick and Print vegetables bring Oliver's Vegetable by Vivian French Alive for Kids through the Virtual Book Club for Kids Summer Camp

When the prints were dry we have added what Vegetable they are from – I have written the words on but you could easily cut out images from a magazine or print off from the Internet of the vegetables that you used and it provides a way of talking about the vegetables again and again.

Printing with Vegetables

Once we had finished the prints I left T to print on her own with large sheets of paper – it quickly progressed from printing with the vegetables to painting herself and printing with her hand and arm – but that is half of the fun for an art/craft activity in our house.

This week – on Tuesday Toddler Appproved has shared about planting a Rainbow fruit and veggie garden

and Yesterday The Educators’ Spin On It shared an activity to go with The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle as well as a Free Printable.

The Virtual Book Club for Kids Summer Camp is very pleased to partner with Green Kids Crafts – they have recently started a Digital Discovery Box subscription meaning that the ideas that were only available to the US are now available world wide.

With a Discovery Box each month you get a range of fantastic nature and outdoor based activities straight to your inbox this month’s theme is Garden perfect for everyone joining in with the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp this summer.

We’ve tried one of the ideas from the discovery box – growing our own beans with fantastic instructions it’s a firm favourite. I love all of the ideas and we will be trying a few more this month.

bean growing experimentJoining with the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp and subscribing to our activity planners you will be able to see details of our fantastic Green Kids Craft Giveaway as well as a great special offer.

Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

2 Comments

  1. This too seems like a cool way to use those veggies that might have lost their crispness for eating, but you could still use them for a learning activity! 🙂 Fun post.

  2. These prints turned out beautifully!! We will need to steal some veggies from my mom’s garden so that we an try this.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.