🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop
- 🏆 Sportsmanship — Experiencing winning and losing in a supportive environment — and practicing how to handle both graciously — builds the emotional resilience and social grace that competitive situations throughout life require.
- ⚡ Quick Thinking & Processing — Fast-paced games that require quick visual scanning or rapid decision-making develop processing speed and visual discrimination — skills that support reading fluency and mathematical fact retrieval.
- 🤸 Physical Coordination — Active games that combine movement with rules develop both gross motor skills and the cognitive capacity to think while moving — a form of dual-task processing that prepares children for sports and coordinated physical activities.
- 📜 Rule-Following — Learning and following game rules builds the ability to hold instructions in working memory and apply them consistently — a direct parallel to the classroom rule-following that teachers identify as the top kindergarten readiness skill.
Getting your preschooler to eat healthier can be a challenge, but with the right approach it can be a fun experience for both of you. This game encourages your preschooler to use his/her senses of taste, touch, and smell to learn. Taste & Tell is a game that also allows you to get your picky eater to enjoy old favorites as well as explore new tastes and textures. The next time you want to introduce a new fruit to your preschooler, try playing the Taste & Tell game!
What You Will Need
A blindfold (If your preschooler is hesitant about blindfolds ask him/her to close their eyes)
Several paper bags
An assortment of fruit such as: Bananas, different varieties of apples, kiwi, papaya, cherries, mangos, blueberries, rasberries, strawberries, grapes, nectarines, peaches, apricots, oranges in different varieties, plum, etc.
Note: Find fresh fruit that are in season.
How To Play
1. Place one type of fruit into a small paper bag. You can do several bags at once which will help the game proceed much smoother. Each bag will contain a different type of fruit.
2. Fold the bag, so that your preschooler can not see what is in it.
3. Blindfold your preschooler or ask him/her to shut their eyes tightly.
4. Slightly open up on of the bags and ask your preschooler to put his/her hand into the bag without pulling the fruit out and describe what the fruit feels like. Encourage your preschooler to explain what the fruit feels like, is it hard or soft, warm or cold, fuzzy or smooth, etc.
5. Explain to your preschooler that your will now let him/her taste the fruit to see if they can guess what it is. Depending on the type of fruit you choose, you can have some of the fruit pre-cut and ready for tasting at this point in the game, or you can open the fruit at the time of tasting.
6. Ask your preschooler to guess what the fruit is. If it is an introductory fruit, ask your preschooler to tell you whether he/she likes the taste or not.
Note: For introductory fruits be sure to let your preschooler explore the fruit after the game and encourage him/her to ask questions about the fruit.
More Preschool Nutrition Ideas>>
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The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends limiting all screens (including video games) to 1 hour per day for children ages 2–5. Simple, educational touchscreen games have minimal harm when time-limited; fast-paced, commercial, or violent video games are not appropriate for preschoolers at any screen time level. The best educational value comes from games that are interactive and challenge thinking — simple puzzles, matching, and story-based apps. Video games should not replace physical games or creative play for any preschooler.
Losing graciously is a developed skill, not a personality trait — most preschoolers 3–5 years old struggle with it, as the cognitive and emotional development required to manage competitive disappointment is still forming. Strategies: play more cooperative games where there's no individual loser; use "friendly games" where the goal is playing well, not winning; model gracious losing yourself; validate the feeling ("It's hard to lose. I feel that way too sometimes") before teaching behavior. Over repeated experience, most children develop losing tolerance by age 6–7.
