When Chronicle Books kindly sent us a copy of a new book called Are You Eating Something RED? by Ryan Sias, I wasn’t so sure that my two and a half year old would be into it. I could not have been more wrong – Oliver loves this book AND I’ve been using it to get him to eat more vegetables!
One of the reasons I though Oliver wouldn’t be interested in this book is that it’s rated for children aged zero to two years, but I have a wunderkind who is already reading, and he loves to read this one aloud to us at the table (my husband, a teacher, figures it’s at about a Level Two reader). Throughout the book, Greenie promotes eating healthy, encouraging children to eat foods of different colours (GREEN, RED, YELLOW, ORANGE, and PURPLE), and we have been challenging Oliver to try some of the foods that Greenie recommends. We actually convinced him that Greenie would highly recommend snap peas the other night, and he actually ate some – yah!
It’s fantastic that Oliver loves to read this book and it’s great that it has prompted him to try some new foods, but here’s another bonus: the companion to this book is Are You Eating Something GREEN?, a 36 sheet tear-off pad of companion paper placemats (pictured below). Each placemat has a full-colour illustration on one side with a fill-in colouring picture on the back. Oliver loves colouring on these placemats and reading the words on them … and they are SUCH a great thing to toss into your diaper bag before heading into a restaurant or some place where your little one may become bored.
Purchase Are You Eating Something RED? ($9.99 CAD) and Are You Eating Something GREEN? ($9.99 USD) at your local bookstore or online from retailers Chapters or Amazon. Thanks again to Chronicle Books for supplying us with copies of these Go Greenie! reading materials!
The placemats are SUCH a good idea! Are the placemats all the same or do they all have different illustrations and pictures to colour?
Green is the way to go!