Making Labels

In the run-up to the traditional time when we think about autumn and the harvest, we talked about food and food labelling this week. We started by looking at tins of sweetcorn - purely because I happened to have bought a multipack of sweetcorn, which meant the three children could each have a tin of their own to look at while we discussed what was on the label.

We talked about food preparation words and symbols: storage, microwave or hob, cooking time, best before dates, even nutritional information. Then I peeled off one of the labels so they could see it was actually a rectangle in shape, but when curled round the tin it became cylindrical. That got them interested!

Their pens, paper, glue etc. were all close at hand, so we got some things out of the cupboard and started to make our own labels. D.'s prototype label was peas, but he wanted to do a better one, so we stuck that on a tin of pilchards. He then chose the safe option of sweetcorn, M. wanted 'chocolate peas' in his tin, and their younger sister stoutly insisted that hers was just 'red food'.



Using the old label I'd peeled off as a template, I cut out some 'labels' for each child on coloured paper and reminded them about the food preparation, storage and nutritional information that could appear on their labels. (I thought coloured paper was better than plain white, as it conceals the huge amount of space often left unused when younger children are drawing!)

When the labels were finished, I helped with the lettering on M.'s label, and his sister's, and then we stuck them onto the tins with glue. D. did a very good job, I felt, writing all the words himself and drawing a very creditable image of sweetcorn in between 'sweet' and 'corn'.



TIP: Apart from the one I had already removed, I left the other labels underneath the home-made labels, so it wouldn't be too much of a magical mystery meal whenever someone decided to open them in the future!