Book Related Activity - Crafty Dinner Plates

We love our books so much that I have decided we are going to do a monthly activity where we do something that has been inspired by the books we have been reading. 

This month I decided to do a crafty idea inspired from one of our favourite stories. Dustbin Dad. The story is about a dad that literally eats anything, even peoples left overs. One day he accidentally eats something meant for the cat and actually turns into a cat. Its a really funny story that we love. 

I thought that something we could do as an activity would be to make plates of food out of different materials. Lily really loves sticking and so this is the perfect way to be creative. 

For this activity I got some paper plates, some coloured foam pieces, some tissue paper, coloured sticks, and cotton wool. I am sure that there are other things you can use to create the idea of different foods but these were my choices. Then you will need a decent stick of glue to get everything stuck down. 

The first thing we used was the cotton wool which I said to Lily "Lets make mash potatoes" Lily thought it was great that they looked like mash. Lily is getting better at understanding where to stick things down now and so understood when I told her that she needed to stick all the cotton wool toggether so it looked like a pile of mash would on a plate. 

I then asked Lily what colour carrots was. She replied with "orange". So I got her lots of orange sticks out that she could place down and these became our carrots. These were a little trickier to stick down and I had to help Lily a little bit. 

Next up we used the green tissue paper to make peas. I again asked Lily what colour peas are. It's always great to make an activity extra educational by asking questions throughout. I showed Lily how to squish them up into a little ball so then they looked like peas. She did a really good job at this and then stuck them down onto the plate. 

After this I cut out a round shape that could be meat. You can be extra creative with this part depending how good you are, or your child may be able to do this themselves if they are old enough. The foams are a great resource to use for this as they make what ever you are sticking down a little more 3d and stand out on your plate. After Lily popped the glue on and stuck down what was the meat. We had finished out dinner plate. 

Lily was super impressed with her plate of food! It was such a fun but easy activity to do and you can be as creative as you want and make all sorta of meals for the plates. Lily actually made a few more after this all by herself and did a great job. 

She then turned it into a role play activity by giving out her plates of food to her teddies and pretending to eat the food herself. 

What would you make for your crafty plate of food?