Strawberry Sensory Success

We have been spending some time each week focusing on a particular fruit.  I have loads to post about apples which we have been working on for months but we've now moved onto strawberries so I'm starting with that!

The boys are not good at eating fruit and vegetables.  We've made what we consider to be huge steps forwards over the past months. To most people it probably looks minimal.  Charlie is eating apples and trying new fruits regularly.  James has been eating carrots and sometimes a sprout or piece of broccoli with a roast dinner! It's all very wonderful!

We approach this with a very relaxed attitude, there's no expectation that they eat what's put in front of them, we play, sing, cook and explore the fruit with all our senses. If someone takes a bite, we go really over the top with praise!

Today we made strawberry smoothies.  I find the boys really like the smoothie maker as it gives rewards that Charlie in particular finds pleasing - not the smoothie - the really loud noise and the great visual stimulation!  The first time I made smoothies with him he danced around the kitchen!  Today, he was brilliant, signing please to press the button again and again.  (I purposely kept switching it off to keep the communication going).  His smoothie was very well blended after this surprise communication game!

We then led onto some time spent sitting at the table with the smoothies and some more strawberries.  We listened and watched several different 'Strawberry Fields' videos on YouTube, listened to the story, 'The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry and The Big Hungry Bear' and did a bit of sensory play and hand massage with some strawberry scented soap and Lush strawberry massage bar.

Charlie sat with me doing this for a good 45 minutes and ate quite a bit of strawberry!