Although playing with food is usually something we discourage our children to do, play food made from plastic or wood plays an important role in a child’s early development.
Toy food enhances fine motor skills, aids with visual recognition, and helps children develop vital life skills like working as a team and cleaning up after themselves.
Here are seven ways play food can benefit your child and aid in his development.
1. Visual Recognition
When your child plays with toy food items, they help him gain a better understanding of the differences and similarities in colors, patterns, and shapes. Play food also helps children sort items into types, sizes, and textures.
While it’s easy to take the ability to recognize colors, shapes, and patterns for granted, this phase of visual recognition is vital during early development
2. Self-Confidence and Imagination
When your child begins to make the connection that he can combine food items any way he likes while he’s playing “kitchen,” it encourages his creativity.
Playing with toy food and cooking in real life are both activities that reward experimentation. When your child puts toy French fries on his toy peanut butter sandwich and you applaud his effort, it bolsters his self-confidence.
3. Teamwork and Social Skills
Toy food items and toy kitchen sets are great for promoting teamwork because they are ideal for co-play. The children will discuss what they are going to “cook,” how they will do it, and assign each other roles.
Important social skills like cooperation, tolerance, patience, and compromise are hashed out while the play kitchen teammates work toward a common goal – and the excitement of pretending to cook may help introverted children come out of their shells. They will also learn how to share, take turns, and listen to the opinions of others.
4. Responsibility
While children are very young, they probably don’t understand that the cooking process involves organization, preparation, and cleaning up afterward.
Playing with toy food and cooking in a toy kitchen teaches children responsibility because they quickly realize that everything needs to be cleaned up and packed away when they are done. Instilling healthy habits like cleaning up after themselves benefits children in many areas later on in life.
5. Motor Skills
When children play with toy foods, they are developing their fine motor skills. Picking up the toys, pretending to cut them up, and “eating” them with toy utensils develops their hand-eye coordination and fine-tunes the muscles in their hands and fingers.
Playing with toy food and a toy kitchen set helps children gain dexterity in their fingers and hands – something that is vital to perform everyday tasks like writing, getting dressed, and feeding themselves.
6. Healthy Food Choices
When a child plays with toy foods like vegetables, fruit, eggs, and meat, it encourages them to make healthier food choices in real life.
Children imagine the “food” they have prepared in appetizing scenarios, which usually encourages them to try new foods in real life, too.
7. Language and Communication
Any form of role-playing is beneficial to a child’s development because it encourages them to engage in storytelling and express themselves creatively.
A child will vocally enact the role they have given themselves, which promotes language development and effective communication. Playing with toy food also enhances their vocabulary as they learn the names of ingredients and foods.