Felt Food

To start, here are a few pictures from my felt phase.  I had wanted to make felt food for my classroom, for a while now - Especially, to save money on buying toys and learning materials.  Why spend $20 on 1 food set, when you can have a few sets for less than $5 altogether?!  

First I made a hamburger set - great for stacking, pretend play, color identification, and so on.  I also made a watermelon (although I don't have a picture of it now), as that is one of my favorite fruits.

 Here are pictures of the counting cookies I made, too.  On one side of the cookie is a number.  And on the other side there are chocolate chips, corresponding to that number.  Students can use them for counting practice, number identification, sequencing, pretend play, and so on. 

After, I made a birthday cake with candles.  This is something I wanted to buy in the store, but could not justify spending $30+ on it - especially when most of the sets had tiny candles that could be a choking hazard for my students.  For the cake, I used felt with foam on the inside (leftover from a DIY project my husband had made).  The candles are made of felt and leftover batting from other projects.   

I use the cake in the classroom for birthday celebrations.  We count the number of students in the class, and then count out that many slices of cake.  Then, the birthday student puts on/counts the candles, we sing, and the student pretends to blow the candles out.  After, the birthday student passes a slice of cake to each of his/her classmates, and everyone pretends to eat it - A healthy way to celebrate birthdays in the class, while sharing, counting, and pretend playing!