The Very Hungry Caterpillar: Sense of Taste

Today we have an Adventures of Adam reader joining us for our Five Senses Play Challenge. We got to know Monica through our 31 Day Sensory Play Challenge and we are thrilled that she is participating in our current challenge.

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This week it’s ALL about taste… and we get to share our messy play fun with you! I was very excited to tackle taste as I’ve always wanted Joshua to be exposed to different types of foods from the very start, especially after seeing my husband and my niece suffer with ‘fussiness’ and (in my niece’s case) food phobia. We’ve been very lucky that Joshua has always been a very good eater and is usually willing to try anything we put in front of him – that is, except for fruit and vegetables! He has a sixth sense about them, somehow he knows that the little bits in front of him are either the dreaded fruit and veg and onto the floor they go! We’ve tried not to make a fuss out of it, and we’ve – slowly – seen an improvement. He went through a mango phase, a strawberry ‘month’ and then pineapple was his fruit of choice, but ever since then… nothing! So I decided to tackle fruit for our tasting activity, in the hopes to make it fun!

I like to base my messy play around a book, I feel it ties it all together. So, with fruit in my mind, there was only one way to go… ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’!

I started by making a colourful caterpillar by cutting out coloured card circles, adding ‘legs’ and ‘hair’ and then laminating them together. The idea was that every circle would act as a plate for fruit of matching colour. I cut up some banana, satsumas, kiwi, grapes and raisins, and red apples (all cut down to small pieces to prevent choking).

We finally managed to get him to taste some of the fruit and all of the sudden he was off! He tried everything at least once and even pointed at fruit he wanted to taste but couldn’t get from the ‘plates’.

He definitely didn’t like all the fruit I put out BUT he had a good go at tasting it all and I found out he LOVES bananas and satsumas! He tried the apple slices a few times but wouldn’t actually swallow any… still, one to go back to! And I can categorically say he DOES NOT like grapes, raisins or kiwi (gosh, the shudders as he tasted!). But now I have more fruit options to offer as snacks!

What I like most about this activity is that it can be repeated with other food groups (the caterpillar did eat lots in the book!) and it can be extended with colour matching and number recognition for the older ones. And even better, you get to keep the nice caterpillar for a wall decoration later!

All in all, a great activity – and one I will be repeating soon with vegetables, I think! And now I know… no raisins for Joshua!

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Thank you to Monica for sharing her fantastic Hungry Caterpillar sense of taste activity. This guest post is part of our Five Senses Play Challenge, for the sense of taste. Click here for more taste activity inspiration.