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Pocket Animal Play Trays: Feeding at the Farm
- Learning Resources Posted On Nov 1, 2021 | 2 - 4 Years SEL
Learning Resources® Pocket Animal Playsets have so many great ways of encouraging small world play. In this series of blogs, we share a simple play tray idea for each animal theme: Oceanworld, Farmworld, and Dinoworld. Next up in the series, we have a great one for any children who love farm animals… Feeding at the Farm!
What you need:
- Learning Resources Pocket Farmworld Playset (available on Amazon)
- Play tray (this one is from Target)
- Silicone cupcake liners
- Selection of sensory materials (we used dyed chickpeas, dried pasta, and a bean/pea mixture)
- Learning Resources Handy Scoopers™
The Set-Up
For this activity, we used our green play tray for that extra farmyard feel. I put the pocket animals in the larger tray compartment and then one silicone cupcake liner in each smaller compartment. I got my preschooler to help me pick which sensory bases we should use as the food, and she loved being involved in this process. She included beans and peas, colorful dried fusilli pasta, and then dyed dry chickpeas. To make the chickpeas colorful, you add a generous squirt of acrylic paint into a baggie with the chickpeas, squish it all up, and then spread them out on tin foil to dry overnight. I added a fine motor tool to the tray, adding a little extra sense of challenge and intrigue.
Exploring the Tray
My four-year-old has always enjoyed playing with animals with her open-ended play, normally feeding them and looking after them. So as you can imagine, this tray was right up her street. She got straight to work pretending to show the animals all of the different food options. She would ask them what they wanted to eat and then trot them over to the food. She even decided that the chickpeas were the ‘sweet treats’ and that her animals were not allowed until after eating the rest of their meal! If only she followed that rule herself!
The magical play kicked off when she started acting out play situations between the animals. She liked making them talk to each other, pretending some of the animals were waiters and waitresses, serving the rest of the animals. The smaller size of these pocket animals is so nice because it gets her fine motor skills working to move them around the tray and encourages her to manipulate them with precision.
After each animal had some food, she would ask if they enjoyed it. We talked about the color and texture of the foods and whether my preschooler likes to eat the cooked versions, and how their textures differ. We also tried to name the different farm animals and speculated what type of food they like to eat at a real farm.
Using the Tools
The Handy Scoopers were used much less with this tray. She liked to ‘catch’ the animals in the scooper compartment and drop them into the food bowls. During our next play, she may choose to use the Handy Scoopers more to move the different foods around the tray, but this time around, she preferred to leave the food in the silicone liners and not mix them up.
This particular play tray was great for encouraging role play with the animals. I love how she invented little personalities for the different types of animals, with some being picky eaters and others being a little greedy! So much imagination at work.
Writer’s Bio
Lucy Baker is a Mom of two (4 & 8 years old) passionate about creative play and hands-on learning. She firmly believes in providing children with the opportunity to learn through play and being part of their play journey as a parent. See more of her creative play ideas and process art projects on Instagram @findthelittlemind, and over on her blog, Find the Little Mind.
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