Read.Explore.Learn : Patterns

Today's lunches have patterns in them to go with our first Read.Explore.Learn. meme contribution! (At the end of this post.)

I packed Birdie's lunch in her favourite blue Sassy box. She got a bagel, a cheddar-jack & mozza cheese pattern, and a green grape, red grape pattern.

Bella got a bagel, some leftover fajita chicken, some red grape, green grape skewers, and some mozzarella & tomato skewers. I think it made for a very colourful, eye-pleasing lunch! 

Pickle's sandwich is a real work of art - I painstakingly shaped it to look like a regular sandwich just cut in half ;)  Heheh.  Actually, I had thought Pickle was going to have the school's hot lunch selection, but he changed his mind, and kind of late in our morning routine, so he got a hastily made lunch. 

He was funny though, he's so used to getting a sandwich that looks like something, that he declared this one "a butterfly". Okay sure, I can see it - and good for him using his imagination!

This is the first time we have taken part in the Read.Explore.Learn. meme! My Sprout, who just turned 5, is a preschool dropout. She has been going to a Montessori preschool, just for the social aspect, since she was 2, and her 2 year old sister Birdie still goes, but this year she doesn't want to go anymore - she says she just wants to be home with me - and since next year she has to start school for real, I decided to let her. I'm trying to do some preschool activities with her at home though - so today we read a book about patterns and I made a patterned lunch for her to carry on with the learning fun :)

We read: 

Busy Bugs: A Book About Patterns

by Jayne Harvey

The bugs in the book are getting ready to put on a big show, and there are patterns throughout the story - on the bugs themselves, the way they arrange things, and in the show. The story rhymed and the patterns were easy to spot. Sprout was engaged and enjoyed predicting the next step in the pattern. 

I made her a lunch of cheese and carrots arranged in an alternating pattern, a bagel, and grape "grubs". We looked at the cheese and carrot patterns three ways: cheese-carrot-cheese, square-circle-square, and yellow-orange-yellow. The grape grubs bodies make different sequence patterns too!

The grape grubs are really easy and cute. They are just grapes cut in half and skewered on a pick, with chocoladehagel (sprinkles) for eyes :)