My two year old granddaughter is a very picky eater, but we are trying something I mentioned in an earlier post, Feeding the Finicky Eater. I guess you could call it Total Immersion. I chose one food item I wished my granddaughter would eat and I served it over and over. She had sliced apples, cooked apples, applesauce, apple wedges in caramel sauce, and even apple juice, apple fruit leather, and apple pie filling. I thought that maybe if she had it often enough, it would become “familiar”. It’s only been a few days for us, but so far it seems to be working! My granddaughter ate almost one half of an apple today at lunch!

If possible, walk through an apple orchard with your child this week. Maybe you have a neighbor with two or more trees, or maybe there is a large commercial orchard nearby. But teach your child what an apple tree looks like in spring, summer, autumn and winterl – what ever season you happen to be living in now. Talk about how the tree grows buds (spring) which ripen (summer) into big, luscious red apples (fall!). Then in the winter, the branches are bare.

Happy Apple Week.

And if you’d like to begin more formal reading instruction, check out these related posts:
How to teach your baby to read
The pros and cons of early reading
Reading Readiness

Photo Credits:
Top: http://www.flickr.com/photos/floyd-out/ / CC BY 2.0