<p>A-Z </p><p>Pre-school food poster activity ideas </p><p>Full poster  Display the poster and talk to the children about each letter of the alphabet. Can they make the sound of each letter? Talk about the food representing each letter. Get them to name each food. Can they describe the appearance, smell, taste and texture of each food?  Set up a tasting session with some of the foods on the poster, e.g. carrot sticks, dates, bagel. Ask the children which foods they would like to taste and try to include some of these, if appropriate. Get the children to taste the foods and talk about the appearance, smell, taste and texture. Remember to send a letter home before the session to check for allergies or religious/cultural reasons why some children might not be able to taste certain foods.  Set up a cooking session to make a dish which includes some of the foods on the poster, e.g. freeze fruit juice to create ice lollies, use bagels to make sandwiches, bake some potatoes and prepare fillings.  Ask the children if they can think of any other foods beginning with each letter. The children could draw, paint, collage or model other foods beginning with these letters. You might just focus on a selection of letters you are currently teaching.</p><p>Cut-out and laminate  Attach the letters to a board or wall in a jumbled order. Ask the children to help you re-order them.  Hand-out the letters to the children and get them to move about and find a space. Ask them to them organise themselves into alphabetical order. You may need to display an alphabet to help.  Shuffle the cards, choose one and say only the letter. Can the children remember the food on the card used to represent this letter? Let the child who guesses correctly ‘win’ the card. Repeat.  Talk to the children about different ways the cards could be sorted, e.g. by colour, shape. Sort the cards together. Let the children work in small groups to have a go at finding a new way to sort the cards. Check the children’s sorting and ask them to explain what they have done.  Talk to the children about where food comes from. Establish that our food starts as part of a plant or animal. Get the children to help you sort the foods under the headings ‘plant’ or ‘animal’.  Choose a food and ask the children what dish it can be used to make, e.g. potato – mashed potato, chips, roast potatoes, potato croquettes. Can they explain how the food needs to be prepared before it can be eaten, e.g. washed, chopped, cooked.  Ask the children for words that can be made from the cards and see if they can move the letters to make the words, e.g. cow, pig, cat.  Crack the code! Cover the letters and word/s on each card so only the food is showing. Make a ‘secret’ word using the first letter of each food to form a letter in a new word, e.g. carrot, avocado and tomato to represent the word ‘cat’. Stick these food cards on the board and get a child to crack the secret code by writing the first letter of each food under the card. Help the children read out the word. Repeat. You could try the following words: big, dog, eat.</p><p>Note:  Every effort has been made to choose foods which make the letter sounds. However, this was not possible for the letters ‘i’ and ‘x’.  The food for ‘x’ is xigua which is pronounced ‘zee gua’ (gua, as in the fruit guava). This word means watermelon in Chinese. </p><p>© Food – a fact of life 2009</p>