Chef's Choice

When it's time for lunch, ask your child to help you plan the menu. The white paper bag easily transforms into a chef's hat. Take a large sheet of paper and draw squares on it, above each of them write the names of the products for each dish - meat, vegetables, fruits, drinks and everything else that your family usually eats. Then ask your little chef to help you decide what to make for lunch. Label each square with the name of the dish you have chosen and illustrate it with pictures from magazines, drawings or glued pieces of dry food. When the whole family gathers at the dinner table, the child will proudly read the menu, leaving no reason to doubt that he knows everything about these dishes.

Tasters Choose a cookbook that has a lot of illustrations and leaf through it with your child, telling him how different food can taste - sour, sweet, salty, bitter, hot, spicy. Then start tasting, selecting foods with different taste properties - for example, lemon (sour), chocolate (sweet), canned cucumber (salty), radish (bitter), mustard or pepper (spicy), tomato relish or ketchup (spicy); place them in a basket or bowl. Let the child, with his eyes closed, stick out his tongue and try to identify the taste of each product. See how often he guesses right. Talk about how one taste differs from another. Then switch places and let him now put different pieces of food on your tongue. He might want to add something new, like garlic or onion.