When I am not being an artist, I am a teacher. My specialty area is the development of children birth through 5 years of age. So, when I read in the show perspective ,

" a spectacular visual presentation of cooking or eating in advertisements, infomercials, cooking shows or other visual media, that arouse a desire to eat…" the very first thing I thought of was how we, as Early Childhood folks, often have to be creative in getting children interested in food. Not only is it important for children to understand nutrition, and have a sense of the importance of feeding and taking care of their bodies, but you also have the “picky eaters”. Much of this skill was honed a few years back, when I was the Education Director for a program with fragile children (children with HIV, Cancer, etc) For these kids, food is important, and being able to eat healthy foods is the key to their ability to live without IV’s and machines and protein shakes (although those are very tasty).

But, you don’t have to work with medically fragile children to know what I’m talking about. I know that there are people reading this now who know EXACTLY who this is for…those children who need more than a nice presentation on the plate to be drawn into the enjoyment of food. These are children who aren’t particularly moved by a food’s nutritive qualities. They want fun. Action. Fantasy. Humor. THEN, they’ll eat it.

Why do you think we have animal crackers?

So, that’s the direction I took with this show. I used to have children take part in food prep with me, so it was important to make it fun. Generally speaking, children don’t crave cauliflower. If you’ve got a plate of cauliflower and a room full of kids, you almost always have nothing going in your favor. But, make it a cauliflower farm animal walking on watermelon hills, and then let your sheep take a nice little dip in the ranch dressing pond, and you’ve got their imaginations going… you’ve got storytelling… you’ve got role playing and children playing with (and loving) their food. You’ve got lunch!

Let me also say that this took MUCH longer than I remember it taking. I started working on the sheep at 7pm and finished at 1am! Maybe in the classroom, I wasn’t as careful or something. Anyway…

Here you have... SHEEP!