An Offering to Taste: Interpreting the Connections between Food, Imaginary Play & Human Relationships

With the annual NAEYC conference scheduled for Atlanta this year, our leadership team submitted proposals for presentations on two topics, one of which was a panel presentation focused on the ever-present play of pretend cooking. Built from almost two years worth of provocations, documentation and my own pedagogical reflections, the panel below (8′ by 4′ and broken into segments for this blog) urges us to take a closer look at the daily mud-pies and sand-birthday cakes that the children offer us, to take a look at what the children are telling us about the importance of food in our human connections.