This lettuce is super simple and such an easy and fun project!!! 🍃 It holds up quite well to extended and hardy use. Best of all….this felt lettuce looks a LOT like the real, homegrown lettuce you will find out in the garden!😊
🍃 Read the details below to make this yourself!⬇🍃
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For our Lettuce and Spinach Leaves, we simply drew some leaf like forms on top of felt and cut them out. We also made a few lettuce leaves out of green craft foam. That’s it; simple and quick. 🍃😊
I made as much lettuce and spinach as the kids requested (2 sheets total of 11 x 9″ light green felt, and 1 sheet of dark green felt); we added the lettuce and spinach mix to a quart-sized berry carton that I had saved just for this purpose. If you do not have a berry carton, up-cycling a lettuce container or other similar food container will also work quite well! I also think that wooden ones (similar to these) are adorable and have a nice, farm-fresh appearance.
🍃Note: For some of the first lettuce and spinach leaves that I made, I traced around the outline of some paper leaves (cut on my Cricut cutter machine a few months prior), but once I really started cutting out a few of the traced leaves from the felt, I realized just how easy the leaves were to make and that the perfectly formed leaves were wasting a lot more material than necessary….and, they did not look like real garden lettuce, anyhow! We much prefer the realistic look of our hand-drawn and cut leaves; not the traced ones.🍃
🍃The kids love using this lettuce for open-ended play….they often make salads or add it into dishes. Lately, they have been using it for homemade sandwiches.
🍃When combined as a mix, the lettuce and spinach make for a great sorting activity; my children often like to separate the spinach from the lettuce, and use those items when they prepare similar meals to that which they are accustomed to eating (i.e. spinach used in certain soups or dishes; lettuce is usually kept fresh).
🍃I’m very glad that we made these leaves and am thrilled to see the kids having a positive outlook on fresh lettuce. Once something that they greatly disliked, lettuce is now something that they have learned to enjoy in small amounts; positive experiences like making and having felt lettuce in their play kitchen has helped in reaching this goal!🍃
🍅Felt Tomatoes have had a similar effect; now, the older children are more open to eating tomatoes (see our easy, felt tomatoes, here). NT has requested that we make green onions as the next food item for his play kitchen…. Since Green onions are something NT normally dislikes; we are hopeful that he might grow to like those, too, after a few weeks of play. 😊🍃🥬
What are your favorite types of play food? Are there any in particular that you would recommend that we try making? As always, I LOVE hearing from you!
And, it’s on to our next lesson! I look forward to sharing it with you soon!!! 😊
~Gloria
🧈P.s. For more DIY play foods, like our Irish Butter, click here!