This is a game where the child has to 'feed' the animal with food. Careful! Don't put your fingers inside the mouth or the animal may bite you!
How to make it yourself
This is a game which is made using plastic food container. The cover is partially cut to act as the 'mouth' of the animal, and a picture of the face of the animal is drawn and pasted on the cover. Pieces of sponge (cut out from dish-washing sponge) or furry balls as shown in the picture above, will act as the food.
Chopsticks or squeezers may be used as the cutlery in older children.
What purpose does it serve?
By pretending that the animal is real, the child engages in pretend play, which is important for the social and emotional development of the child. It is important for the child to be able to understand what other beings, apart from himself, think and feel.
By feeding the animal, the child understands that animals are like us, they go hungry and need food too! That brings in empathy in the child and the child can learn to be considerate and offer food.
By not putting the finger into the mouth of the animal while feeding it, the child understands that there are certain danger involved in interaction, and there are invisible boundaries. If the child crosses the boundary (in this case, the animal's mouth), he may be putting himself in danger (of being bitten by the animal). Although there are tamed animals, it is important to understand that, just as well as he doesn't like the doctor sticking the thermometer into his mouth, the animals may also feel threatened if he sticks his fingers into its mouth.
By picking up the food, the child is using his fine motor skills to grab the food. He is also using his visual muscles to see the food, his visual-motor skills to bring his finger to the food so he can grab it. He uses the same visual-motor skills to bring the food accurately to the position of the mouth, and activates his fine-motor to release the food at the right time to drop it into the animal's mouth.
For older children, cutlery such as chopsticks/squeezers may be used.
The child may also feel the texture of the 'food' and imagine what the food might be, such as carrot for rabbits, corn for pigs etc. This further stimulates that imaginative skills and logic development in children (e.g. understand that rabbits are herbivore and therefore he can't be feeding meat to the rabbit)
While feeding, the child may count the number of pieces of the food, and this also helps develop the counting skills and recognition of numbers (sound) (Auditory discrimination). You may wish to conduct the counting in various languages to expose the child to more languages.
Summary of developmental objectives
Visual-motor, Visual, Fine-motor, Counting, Social/emotional development, Imaginative skills, Tactile, Logic development, Auditory discrimination, Proprioceptive.
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