Welcome to Arty Tales online – where the Incinerator Gallery comes to you.

From this month Laura, our Barking Spider Visual Theatre artist and storyteller invites you to join in this creative story and activity from the comfort and safety of your own home.

Play with your food

This workshop is about exploring colour, texture, taste and using our imagination to create edible food art!

This activity is a great way to encourage children to eat the colours of the rainbow and try some new foods and flavours (especially fruits and vegetables) in a fun and playful way.

To start this activity you will need some food. Fruits and vegetables work well as they are colourful, full of flavour and easy to create different shapes with. The foods Laura worked with in the video are just an example of what you could use to explore creating landscapes and images with food. Here are some suggestions:

• fruits: apple, oranges, berries, bananas, mandarins, grapes
• vegetables: cucumber, tomato, celery, capsicum, herbs, avocado, carrot
• nuts and seeds
• bread and spreads
• tofu and noodles

With your help, your toddler could arrange the food themselves to create an artwork, then you could enjoy eating it together. Ask questions about their decisions for example, what colours can you see? What does this food feel like to touch? What does this food taste like? Which part of your picture would you like to eat first? Explore the food on a sensory level using sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.

In the video Laura has created landscapes but feel free to create anything with your food – you could create shapes, numbers, rainbows, faces, castles – anything you can imagine! You can also explore telling stories with the animals, creatures, and worlds that you have created on your plate. This is a truly fun way to dine and a great way to get kids to “eat their broccoli”.

As always, there are no right and wrong ways to play, so have fun using this framework to explore creativity and imagination!