Trees, Flowers, and Butterflies

Big Brother and Little Sister selected some new foods to try in the produce section today. We chose snap peas, spinach, apples, and green beans. I washed all of the food while the kids were watching part of Cars (their favorite movie). It would have been good to involve the kids in washing the vegetables, but I was in a hurry to get the therapy session ready.

I placed all of the vegetables in separate sections on the divided plate, made sure that the kids had water to drink during the session, and wet wash clothes for wiping their hands. I wanted to provide him with one food that he enjoys eating, so I also included some Blue Diamond Almond Nut-Thin crackers on the plate. I used one of Big Brother’s new favorite snacks – Keebler Bites Cinnamon Graham Crackers, in the shape of Cars characters – as his motivational food.

Our divided plate...minus some of the foods & green beans.  I forgot to take a photo at the beginning of our session!

Big Brother has helped wash and snap green beans into smaller pieces before, but I was very surprised at how quickly he got into the therapy session. I showed him how to make trees and butterflies with our foods. We saw weeping willow trees on a recent car ride, so we made them using a green bean as the trunk and snap peas as the leaves. We also made trees using green beans and spinach. For the butterflies, we used two apple slices as the wings and a green bean as the body. We used apple slices as flower petals, a Nut-Thin cracker as the center of the flower, and green bean as the stem. I showed him how to open up the pea pods (like opening a present) to get the peas. We also opened the green beans to get the beans.

Trees and butterfly.

He really got into playing with the food. He loves tractors, so he started “planting” the peas and beans in the field and harvesting them with his combine. After playing for some time, I showed him how to take small bites of the food. I explained that the peas were already in mouse-sized bites for him to try. He smelled a pea, licked a pea, and tiny bite of one. As a reward, I gave him one Cars graham cracker. He took a few more bites of a pea to earn additional crackers, announced that he was done, and got up from the table.

I am extremely pleased with our session. In the past, Big Brother has been very reluctant to touch a food he doesn’t feel comfortable with and certainly wouldn’t try a bite of it. Ryan did a great job of exploring the food and wanted to know what we would be doing tomorrow.