The write start - Jennifer Hallissy 2010

Eat Your Words
Guidelines for the Activities

SERVING KIDS an edible alphabet is a delicious way to whet their appetites for writing. When my son was just learning letters, I was known to dish up eggs that spelled J-A-C-K, pancakes that implored “Eat,” and pasta that asked “How are you?” Now, following my lead, he makes alphabet cookies and creates words out of pretzel dough. Hey, in our house it might not be okay to play with your food, but if you’re going to write with it, well, that’s another story.

MATERIALS

∗ food items, such as pancake batter, cookie dough, cheese slices, pretzel dough, alphabet pasta, or spaghetti

∗ cooking tools, such as alphabet cookie cutters

HOW-TO

Experiment with food presentations that incorporate alphabet shapes. Some suggestions follow.

Variations

For Scribblers: Pre-writers will certainly enjoy eating a plate full of ABCs. Try using a squeeze bottle or turkey baster to carefully squirt pancake batter onto your skillet in the shape of alphabet letters. If you are truly talented, write the letters backward (the flip side always comes out better).

For Spellers: New writers love cutting out cookie dough, and almost anything else, with alphabet cookie cutters. (Try also cutting cheese slices, fried eggs, sandwiches, toast, or tortillas.) The cookie cutters allow Spellers to select specific letters to work with so they can form an edible word. Y-U-M!

For Storytellers: Storytellers can form letter shapes on their own, by rolling out pretzel, cookie, pizza, or bread dough into long snakes. Have them shape the dough into letter shapes, bake, and eat! Will they be able to resist the temptation to eat their letters long enough to form an entire sentence? Well, that’s another tale.

For Scholars: Spaghetti for your thoughts? Alphabet macaroni (or oh-so-shapeable spaghetti) can be used to write out oodles of ideas.