Heritage Education: Through Pretend Play - Making Chinese Fried Rice

Age: From 2 years old

I was reading a book about rice during our blanket time today. Then I got an idea from the book to make it come alive with pretend play. Here are the steps how-to:

1. Get your child familiarized with the heritage by reading a book, for example

First, we read a children's Chinese book about rice together - different ways of cooking rice and different ways of eating rice.

2. Hands-on session through pretend play

Then, we will act out one of the scenes in the book showing mommy frying fried rice. So we had a pretend play session with J donning the apron and making Chinese fried rice for mommy and training teddy bear :-)

Here he can make all the mess and experience cooking without the danger of burning himself, etc.

While frying the rice, we pretended:
1. to add salt, pepper and soya sauce into the pan.
2. that there was smoke coming out of the piping hot rice.
3. to add vegetables and fish to the fried rice.

3. Hands-on session through helping mommy in the kitchen

Once J has enough practice with pretend play, he will know actually what to expect when we make real fried rice together in the kitchen.