Italian feast!

This is the activity that we have done today at "Italian Club" (which basically consists of my son and the daughter of a friend who is also Italian). The aim was to learn the expressions "I like..." and "I don't like..." and start introducing some food vocabulary.

This idea just popped inside my head this morning when I was lying in bed half awake, moments before getting up.

I took 2 large pieces of thick cardboard (they are a little smaller than A3 I would say) and covered them with brown wrapping paper, for neatness and to avoid paper cuts (I had cut them quite roughly...) and also to give them more the appearance of the surface of a table (a "woody" look).

I printed out labels that said "I like...<3" and "I don't like... :(" and started gluing the "I don't like" ones at the top right of the board. (I had to do some of the preliminary work myself, because Yusef and his friend really like to play together masha'Allah, so I have to keep the activity short and sweet or they might get a little restless...)

I remember I had a few scraps of this vintage re-claimed fabric (from the time I thought I was going to learn how to sew...) and I cut 2 rectangles, a little smaller than the boards, so each child could pick a table cloth for their table. I had them glue down only the left half of it, where the plate was going to sit.

Then I helped them stick the "I like ..." label on the inside edge of a plastic plate with hoops of tape at the back (if you have paper ones it's probably better, we had to use A LOT of glue to stick paper on the plastic ones!...).

Then I presented them with a lot of cut out pictures of food items (mainly fruit and vegetable and staples like pasta, rice, milk, etc.) for them to choose what foods they liked and stick them in their plate. Each time one would select a picture, I would prompt them with the name of the item in Italian and encourage them to say the whole sentence themselves: "Mi piace ... la pizza" and so on.

The children got very excited masha'Allah, and soon they were picking and sticking pictures faster than I could go through the 'ceremonial' phrase with them!... and they completely packed their plates.

It was actually hard to find something they disliked for the "I don't like..." section that was going to be hidden under the movable half of the table cloth: 2 good eaters masha'Allah!!!

Finally we glued the plate to the base (on the left), with some strong glue. Do allow some time to set before they proudly run to show it to daddy insha'Allah. It would be a nice touch to add a plastic fork (or to make one out of card and cover it with foil) or even a plastic glass! ... but I didn't have any, nevermind! here's the finished product masha'Allah: