Hi Ho Cheerios

Playing with Food

If your kid doesn’t like to sit at the table, consider purchasing one of the many Cheerios board books, such as The Cheerios Play Book. Each book features pages using Cheerios as part of the picture. The catch? Some of the Cheerios are missing, and it’s up to your kid to fill them in, then eat them. Add your own supply of o’s and it works – better than you might think.

Though I usually frown on mixing books and food because I respect books too much to leave them sticky and covered in unidentified goop, I make an exception for this kind. I used it to keep my kids entertained at restaurants at first. Then it morphed into keeping my active child at the dinner table, followed quickly by the breakfast and lunch table. Mostly I wanted to be able to eat my own food without worrying about my child, and I never finished as quickly as they did. Particularly when we during the “spoon feed the baby first” stage, my food often ended up forgotten. So I’d hand over a book and a handful of o’s and buy myself ten to fifteen minutes of meal time.

We have what I consider the original Cheerios Play Book, but it also comes in animal, counting, Halloween and Christmas versions if you want to extend your repertoire. If you want to change food groups, you can also expand into The Raisins Play Book by Sunmaid or The Goldfish Fun Book by Pepperidge Farm.

Because it’s a board book, the Cheerios book wipes clean fairly easily after each use. Our single copy has lasted through three kids learning to eat and sit at the table, and you can still read all the words.