Toy food and kids food play sets are great for supporting your toddler and preschooler’s speech and language development. Here you’ll find speech therapy ideas to incorporate into your pretend food play time!

Toy food gives a tangible and relatable context for toddlers and preschoolers to explore everyday vocabulary, concepts, actions and routines. Pretend food play allows children to mimic real-life scenarios, like going to the shop, cooking, and serving food. This helps make learning more meaningful.

Join your child’s play by following their lead and modelling sounds, words, and phrases that relate to their everyday experiences.

Related Post: Child Led Play and Following Your Child’s Lead

Kids Food Play Sets and Toy Food

Kids food play sets include a wide range of items. These items include fruits, vegetables, and other toy food items. They also have cooking utensils and kitchen appliances. This variety allows for diverse and engaging play scenarios. It can support your child’s learning. It also helps with their speech and language development.

Toy food encourages creativity, familiarity, and exploration of everyday routines and language. Here are some of my favourite kids food play sets:

Speech Therapy Ideas with Toy Food

1 – Concepts and Vocabulary

One effective way to build your toddler and preschooler’s vocabulary is through modelling and repeating new words in a variety of contexts. Playing with toy food provides opportunities to:

• Label, describe and categorise food and other equipment in kids food sets
• Label actions
• Learn and talk about basic concepts, like hot/cold, full/empty, sweet/sour, hard/soft, hungry/thirsty
• Learn and talk about spatial concepts, like ‘in and on’
• Use engaging sounds (e.g., “mmm”, a sipping sound), gestures (e.g., blowing hot food) and fun words (e.g., “yum”, “eww”, “oh no”)

Here are some examples:

Here are some extra speech therapy ideas to include when you’re playing with toy food:

Sing a song: I like to eat apples and bananas

“I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas,
I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas,
I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas,
I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas”

Read a Book

Picture books are a great tool to encourage word learning. They help develop an understanding of everyday routines and experiences. They also support speech and language development. Characters from books are helpful to reference when playing with toy food.

For example, when you find an apple you could link it to the very hungry caterpillar by saying, “apple… the hungry caterpillar ate an apple… yummy apple”

Related post: 7 Reading Tips for Parents 

Here are some of my favourite picture books that are themed around food:

2 – Gestalts and Scripts

Related posts: Journey Through Language Development

Gestalts are whole scripts or chunks of language. Toy food provides opportunities to model various scripts and gestalts. Children can use these in their play sequences and everyday routines. You could model scripts to:

1. Express Wants and Needs

Pretend food play can be helpful with modelling simple requesting scripts, such as:

• “I want crackers”
• “I need water”
• “I don’t want that”
• “I want something different”
• “Can I have an apple?”

2. Share Thoughts and Opinions

You can use language that helps your child express their thoughts and opinions. For example,

• “I like apples”
• “That’s my favourite”
• “This is yummy”
• “I don’t like it”
• “I like pasta because it’s yummy”

3. Interact Socially

Kids food play sets help with modelling particular social scripts and play routines, such as the play themes – restaurants and cafes:

• “Here are the menus”
• “What would you like?”
• “Do you want a drink?”
• “How much will that be?”

3 – Understanding Directions and Sequences

Pretend food play is a excellent way to follow everyday sequences and directions. Activities like making a sandwich have several steps that follow a specific order. This supports your child’s speech and language development. It also helps their ability to organise their thoughts and actions.

Routine-Based Directions & Simple Instructions

Kids food play sets can be a fun and engaging way to incorporate everyday directions. Some of these directions include:

• Put it in the bin
• Put it on the table
• Wash your hands
• Sit at the table
• Drink some water
• Eat your food
• Give me the spoon
• Let’s get your bottle

Multi-Step Directions and Functional Sequences

Playing with toy food offers a lot of opportunities for learning everyday sequences and following step-by-step instructions. For example,
“First get the bowl, then pour the soup” (kitchen play)
“I’d like a cup of tea and eggs on toast please” (cafe play)

• Functional sequences can include:
• Making a sandwich
• Putting jam or spread on your toast
• Washing your hands
• Setting the table
• Baking a cake
• Making dinner

If your child is finding it difficult to follow the full sequence or multiple instructions at once, simplify the instructions. Break it down step by step. Support their speech and language development by accompanying your spoken language with visuals (e.g., objects, pictures, symbols, signs, gestures).

4 – Play Sequences and Stories

Here are some other speech therapy ideas to include:

a. Add a Story to the Sequence of Play Actions
Start with a character or chef preparing a meal. Next, they face a problem like missing an ingredient. Next, they run to the shop to get the missing ingredient they need or they swap it with another. These storytelling activities support your child’s speech and language development. They help develop your child’s ability to sequence events. They improve problem-solving skills and support describing actions and emotions.

b. Role Play
You can also support your child’s social play by role-playing different characters. Take turns and include social scripts for those scenarios.

c. Suggest Play and Story Ideas
Comment on the play actions and suggest some ideas or add to the story. Wait for your child to response and follow their lead.

Toy Food and Play Themes

The speech therapy ideas above can be included in these toy food play themes below:

• Feeding Dolly
• Grocery Store
• Restaurant / Chef
• Cooking Show
• Home Corner
• Picnic
• Farm-to-Table
• Holiday Feasts (e.g., Christmas Dinner)

This post was about toy food and speech therapy ideas. It included suggestions for pretend food play. There were also recommendations for kids food play sets. What type of food play scenario do you enjoy with your toddler and preschooler at home?