Kids got right to work filling the salad bowl with lettuce, peppers, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and cucumbers for their healthy snack. Something about the slick, realistic ingredients made for great fun in tossing up the salad and serving it on the plate.  2 1/2 and 5 year-old siblings just loved filling and dumping, as they prepared the salad and served it on the plate, dumped it back in the bowl and started over again. Soon they were pretending to chop up the veggies and told mom as she was assembling the olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper containers, “Hurry up with the vinegar!” The stackable pieces provide more fun as kids ordered the ingredients for a pretend sandwich. Mom loved the high quality, durability and toughness of these toys as she declared, “I love these green toys!” Language learning abounds as kids imitate everyday experiences and add their own twist to the story–who knew you could chop up the ingredients without a knife? Pretend play builds language as kids begin to create their own stories, preparing them to be good readers and writers some day.

Available at Green Toys. Click here