Burgers & Fries

Yesterday the children engaged in ‘restaurant’ themed activities for most of the day.  It originated before school when the older children were still here.  I have a few pieces left from a themed playset that belonged to my own children when they were young.  The children use these toys together with miscellaneous other items for a wide variety of food related dramatic play activities.

This time they started making ‘McBurgers” and “McFries” – I’m not sure if they just created these names or if they are terms used at home but I’ve never heard them use the names before today.  I also noticed that the majority of the children chose customer roles leaving the workers scrambling to fulfil all the meal orders.  Usually when they play there are far too many cooks in the kitchen and there is considerable advertising required to attract customers – it is quite interesting.

After the older children left for school the remaining children – aged 2 to 5 – continued the game but now there were fewer customers so I was enlisted to play.  

I requested ‘healthy’ food and was quickly offered a salad. Upon opening my lunch box I was surprised to see meat and buns mixed in with the lettuce and tomatoes.  “Why is there a burger in my salad?” There were fits of laughter as the cooks replied “It’s not a burger, it’s a booger.” EWWww!  

Sorry, I can’t eat salad with boogers in it.  To compensate they offered me chocolate pudding, chocolate milk, chocolate ice cream and a chocolate donut which they said I could just lick the icing off – they know my weakness.

It was at this point that one of the children introduced a new role was and the building inspector showed up.  Personally I think maybe the health inspector was warranted but apparently I hadn’t made enough of a fuss about the food quality.

The building inspector brought his tools and did a thorough inspection before announcing that the restaurant must be closed immediately before the whole building collapsed.  There were so many issues that the only option was going to be to tear it down and build a new one.  

The back hoe driver arrived and there was a riot as restaurant staff made a desperate attempt to save their business.  A special meal was quickly prepared for the back hoe driver.  A coupon for a free movie ticket was included as extra incentive and the back hoe driver was convinced to join the other team.

Now out numbered the building inspector conceded defeat but he was definitely not happy about it.

We had a lot of fun.  I was interested to see the children initiate new roles into a familiar game.  However, I was a little disturbed by the corruption, conspiracy and use of bribery to get what they wanted.  So young to have this mastered already.  Makes me wonder what kind of an example we are setting for out children.