An open box reveals The Play Way Feeding and Mealtimes Play Kit, featuring an assortment of children’s educational materials such as activity cards, cooking utensils, divided plates, measuring cups, and colorful sensory toys—all thoughtfully arranged to inspire interactive learning and play. This sensory play food kit also includes picky eater tools designed to support feeding therapy and promote positive mealtime experiences.

Feeding and Mealtimes Play Kit

Name: Feeding and Mealtimes Play Kit
Brand: The Play Way
SKU: FEEDING-01
Price: 197.0 AUD
Availability: InStock

The Play Way

$197.00

$197.00 ~~$0.00~~

Save

Tax included.

Hub members get 30% off. Become a Hub member. Already a Hub Member? Log in to access your discount.

If mealtimes in your house feel more like a battlefield than a table, you already know how exhausting this is.

This toolbox pairs with the Feeding and Mealtimes Program in the Hub and gives you something practical to do right now. Every item inside has been chosen by our therapy team to help children aged 2-8 explore food in a way that feels safe, low-pressure and genuinely playful. The tableware set, food exploration cards, sensory play activities and food preparation tools work together to build comfort and curiosity around food gradually, without force or stress.

It won't replace specialist support if your child needs it. But it gives you a real starting point, and the tools to make mealtimes feel less like something you're all just trying to survive.

Suitable for ages 2-8. Adult supervision required.

The Feeding and Mealtimes Play Kit is a children's feeding and mealtime kit put together by paediatric speech pathologists and occupational therapists in Australia, for fussy eating, food refusal and selective eating, and for parents looking for low pressure ways to help a child explore new foods at home.

It includes ten tools: a silicone tableware set with four divider plates, four suction bowls, four junior tasting spoons and a cutlery set, a Food Investigator placemat for exploring how a food looks, smells, feels and tastes, a food creation card set with recipes including animal face toast, pancake art and rainbow fruit sticks, a sensory play card set with a ways to play booklet covering coloured rice, cloud dough and nature tables, a food memory card set for memory, snap and go fish, the Let's Eat The Rainbow picture book, a Chop It cutting set with a wavy veggie cutter and a wooden learning knife, an ice-cream shaped pop it for freezing yoghurt drops, large and small tongs with a compartment dish and food picks for family style meals, and a parent guide with checklists on medical, nutrition and mealtime behaviour considerations, food chaining, and a family mealtime stress scale. Ways to play booklets come with the sensory play cards and the food creation cards.

Every kit also comes with supporting video in The Play Way Hub, included, covering sensory play and food learning, low pressure food exploration, family style meals and the division of responsibility in feeding, positioning for eating, drinking, and mealtime behaviours and routines. Most families using this kit have a child somewhere between 2 and 8, but the tools were curated for what is getting in the way at mealtimes rather than for a birthday.

From The Play Way, built by an OT who has worked with children for nearly 20 years. Ships Australia wide. Contains small parts and items recommended for ages 3 and up. Adult supervision is needed, including for any cutting or food preparation. It is not a substitute for assessment or treatment by a feeding therapist.

Ask a question

Size guide

Feeding and Mealtimes Play Kit

$197.00

$197.00 ~~$0.00~~

WHAT'S INSIDE

What's in this play kit

A full kit of play-tools, curated to work together.

Tableware Set

Four silicone divider plates, four suction bowls, four junior tasting spoons and a cutlery set with soft handles. The sections keep a new food from touching the food your child already trusts, and the suction bottoms hold a bowl still while they are still learning to get a spoon out of it. We love the small tasting spoon, because it takes the pressure off.

Food Investigator placemat

A placemat your child puts a food on and simply explores; from how it looks, smells and feels, to whether they want a taste (or not). It gives them a way to describe a food, so they can put words to what they don’t like about it, instead of just pushing the plate away. It also asks whether they liked it today or might like it tomorrow.

Food Creation Card set

Recipe cards for turning food into a work of art. Animal face toast, pancake art, rainbow fruit sticks, apple donuts. Plus, ways to swap in an ingredient your child already eats. And, if they don’t want to eat what they made, they can make it for somebody else.

Sensory Play Card set

Cards for messy play, with a ways to play booklet alongside them. To help your child get their hands into a variety of textures and colours and talk about preferences away from the pressure of mealtimes.

Food Memory card set

A card set of foods to play memory, snap and go fish with. Your child names bananas, pancakes and peas over and over inside a game they’re interested in playing. This gets them familiar and comfortable with a variety of foods without having to smell, touch or taste them.

'Let's Eat The Rainbow' book

A picture book of foods sorted by colour, written by our team. It describes what each food is like instead of whether it is good for you, so a fluffy pancake and a crunchy chicken nugget get the same treatment, and your child can get familiar with a food on a page before it appears on their plate.

Chop It cutting set

A wavy veggie cutter and a wooden learning knife. Both have a handle made for a small hand and the wooden one is blunt, so your child can do the cutting up with you beside them. Handling a food is very different to eating it, and for a lot of children that is a much easier place to start.

Pop It

An ice-cream shaped pop it, for the freezer. Fill the bubbles with yoghurt or pureed fruit, freeze it, and pop out little frozen drops. A fun way to explore foods they already like with different temperature, shape, size and texture.

Tongs, compartments and sticks

Large and small tongs, a compartment dish and little coloured food picks. They are for family style meals, where the food goes in the middle of the table and your child gets to choose what lands on which plate and how much. For some children that bit of control is what makes a new food worth a look. The picks are there for the child who would rather not touch it with their hands.

Parent Guide

A guide for you (the adult), covering what can sit underneath a child's feeding, with checklists on the medical, nutrition and mealtime behaviour aspects to work through and take to an appointment. It also holds a mealtime stress scale to fill in before you start, and a section on food chaining.

Why we built it this way

Nobody is asked to eat anything

At no point does this kit ask your child to put food in or near their mouth, and that is deliberate. When a child does not feel comfortable swallowing something yet, being encouraged to try can take them backwards. So everything here happens before they take a bite; on a card, on a placemat, on a chopping board, in the coloured rice. Your child can say no at any point and might still be getting more used to what is in front of them.

It is still a learning food

When a food gets a yuck, the videos have you answer with, ah, it is still a learning food. When it stinks, with, ah, that one has a big smell. We keep the wording neutral on purpose so that we can come back to it another day and keep exploring curiously.

The scale asks about you too

The mealtime stress scale asks about your child and about you, because what you are carrying as the parent at a meal is part of the picture and hardly anyone asks about that. It also shows you which meals in your week are the calmest ones, and a calm meal is usually where your child has the most room for something new.

INCLUDED WITH YOUR PLAY KIT

The videos that come with it

Everything in the kit is ready to use from the day it arrives, so the placemat can come out with one of the foods your child already eats and you can get investigating straight away. When you want the understanding behind it, there is just over four hours of learning across forty six videos from our therapists. Our speech pathologists start with what can make eating hard for a child in the first place, and then walk through all five projects, from the sensory play and the placemat to the food creations, the family style meal and the book. The activities are filmed with children so your child can follow along and be inspired by peers. Another set of videos covers the mealtime itself, from positioning and drinking through to keeping the food talk going in their normal everyday. We'll send your invitation to access it all when your kit ships.

WHO THIS PLAY KIT IS FOR

If mealtimes look like this

The list of foods they will eat keeps getting shorter, and I do not know what to do about it.
A new food goes on the plate and the whole meal is over before anyone picks up a fork.
We are on a waiting list, and I cannot sit here doing nothing until our name comes up.

If any of that sounds like your family, this is who we built the play kit for.

Who made this

Kait is an OT. She has been working with children and families for nearly 20 years, and she has four kids of her own. Feeding and mealtimes are one of the hardest things for a family to manage when a child is having challenges in this area. So we built this kit for the time between the meals, when nobody is hungry and nobody is upset and there is no pressure to eat something because if they don’t you’re worried they’ll starve. The placemat, the card sets, the book and the guide were all developed by our therapy team, with our speech pathologists on the feeding side of it, so what is in the box and the reasoning behind it are all made to work together and bring as much play as possible to make food fun.

5,000+
Australian children have used our play kits
20 years
of Kait working with children and families

Feeding and Mealtimes Play Kit