Our expert Nutritionist and Sensory Food Specialist Jo Kellam joins us in this short article to talk about the importance of food play, and how our Food Sense Activity Cards are an easy and simple way to try it at home.
If you’ve ever watched a child poke mashed potatoes with a suspicious finger, or hold a strawberry up to the light like it’s a rare gemstone, you’ve seen the power of sensory exploration in action.
For many children- especially picky eaters, anxious eaters, or those with sensory sensitivities - food play is not just fun; it’s a developmental bridge. It helps them learn about food in a low pressure way, long before a bite ever reaches their mouth.
Food play isn’t about making a mess for the sake of it. It’s about building comfort, curiosity, and confidence with food through the senses: sight, smell, touch, sound, and taste. When children can explore food freely, they’re more likely to eventually try it - and enjoy it.
And this is exactly where Food Sense Activity Cards can take the pressure off parents too. They take the guesswork out of sensory food play and give parents, educators, and therapists simple, structured ways to help children explore food safely and joyfully.
And sensory exploration doesn’t just support feeding skills, it also opens the door to building fine motor skills, rich communication and language learning, because food play is naturally social, descriptive, and interactive.
The Food Sense Activity Cards give adults ready made, developmentally informed activities that support sensory exploration and spark meaningful language and learning opportunities. Each card becomes a springboard for conversation, vocabulary building, turn taking, and imaginative storytelling.
The Rainbow Pasta card for example invites children to explore colourful cooked pasta.
• Sensory benefit: visual stimulation, colour sorting, pattern making
• Language benefit: encourages children to label colours, describe shapes (twisty, straight, curly), and follow simple instructions (“Find the blue one”, “Make a pattern”)
• Communication boost: great for turn taking (“Your turn to choose a colour”) and expanding descriptive vocabulary.
Each card highlights the food senses used and skills developed when your child joins in with the activity and even lets you know whether it is a good activity to bring about calm or alertness. Many of the cards can also be adapted for younger children from 6 months, to support a sensory weaning approach right from the off.
To see other places where these Food Sense Food Play Activities and Ideas are used visit www.mealtimesmatter.org or email jo@mealtimesmatter.org