The sick child designs a complete restaurant menu for a place built entirely around their own tastes. Not real dishes — invented ones with names, descriptions, and prices. Three courses at minimum. The menu becomes a physical object worth returning to across multiple sick days, revised and improved each time. Children take their imaginary restaurants seriously.
What you need
- paper
- pencil
- coloured pencils
How to do it
- 1You are opening a restaurant that only you would want to eat at. Design the complete menu.
- 2Three starters, three mains, three desserts. Each needs a name, a short description, and a price.
- 3Hand over paper and pencils. Leave.
- 4Come back for the menu reading when invited. Order something. Take it seriously.
Variations
- If three courses feels like too much: one dish is a complete menu too.
- How it ends: ordering from the finished menu together is the close — once you've ordered, the restaurant's kitchen is closed for the day.
💡 Parent tip
When they show you the menu: order something. Ask what it comes with. Ask whether the kitchen is busy today. Five minutes of genuine engagement with their imaginary restaurant is worth more than any amount of praise.
What your child develops
- Descriptive writing — a menu description is a specific non-fiction format: concise, sensory, persuasive
- Creative world-building — an invented restaurant implies a cuisine, a setting, a clientele that children often elaborate spontaneously
- Numeracy through pricing — inventing prices for imaginary dishes requires informal number reasoning about relative value
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