Alycia Shapiro is co-founder of Sensoryedge, a leading web retailer of toy food, pretend play, and unique chiuldrens furniture.
All children love to play with toy food and dish sets. Boys and girls alike want to use their imaginations to pretend to cook and set the table just like Mom and Dad. When you’re looking to buy toy food, toy pots and pans, and other cooking type toys, look for items that are versatile and those that closely resemble the real foods and dishes. If promoting healthy eating is the most important thing to you, look for both wood and plastic pretend play vegetables. Each has its own benefits depending on venue used and age of child.
Benefits:
- Keeping kids busy while mom is cooking dinner can be tricky. Play food can be the perfect distraction. If you are setting the table you can encourage your little one to set her own table with a pretend play dish set. Kid Kraft makes two sets both with 27 pieces each. Pastel for girls and primary so boys can feel included too. Or if you are cooking dinner she can bring out something like the Food Groups Set by Melissa and Doug. If she has a play kitchen, Melissa & Doug has a wonderful set of pots and pans so she can cook just like Mom.
- Kids love to re-enact daily life. One of the most fundamental things we do is eat so kids just love pretending to prepare, serve and eat food. Providing kids with a wide variety of play food gives them ample opportunity to use their imaginations and have fun. An added benefit is that once they play with their own pretend food, they might actually try foods they’ve turned their nose up in the past.
- Pretend play food and cooking utensils can be very educational. Just the act of pretending to cook educates children to be socially appropriate. With today’s play food you can add an academic element as well. Learning Resources has a wide array of Smart Snacks to inspire creative play while teaching fundamentals of counting, shapes, and colors at the same time. For example, toys like Counting Cookies are pretend play cookies that have different numbers of candy chips on top with the corresponding number underneath.
Finding the perfect toy food and or cooking items for children is easy with so many items to choose from. Manufacturers like Melissa & Doug, Plan Toys, and Learning Resources make high quality and fair priced items that will be part of your kids toy rotation for years. Kids have endless imaginations and with the right toy food items their creativity will know no bounds.
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