No matter the reason behind a child's food aversion or picky eating, food-play is usually recommended as part of the solution. Most of us can remember being told to stop playing with our food when we were kids, but what were we actually doing way back then? How do you play with your food? I like to think about food-play like any other kind of play. When we play with toys, we can build something, we can take toys apart and use the smaller pieces, we can pretend with toys or we can use toys as pieces in games where we make up the rules.That's how we play with food, too. We can build with food. We can make a picture with food. We can take larger pieces of food apart into smaller pieces, we can pretend with food and we can use food as pieces in games with rules. As I've honed my food play model I decided cookie cutter activities deserve their own category as do cooking activities--the ultimate food play that is happening every day, in every home, in some way!These categories of food-play can be a guide for you to make up your own food-play activities and I'll be devoting a week of posts to each main kind of food-play over the next 4 weeks.This week's food-play focus is building. I hope you enjoy the ideas to come and learn fun, new ways to play with your food!Happy food play!