Adventurous Eating Minigames
Try food using all your senses… in our minigames!
At Bub’s food party, players take their monsters to different sense tables where they can touch, look, listen, smell and eventually taste their chosen food through some simple, fun games. Each of the senses games has been designed to gradually build up confidence in trying a fruit or vegetable by finally taking a taste (or a lick!).
One of the key benefits of Adventurous Eating’s gentle approach is that it encourages the player to help their monster try the food, creating a very low-risk environment for kids to explore both new and familiar foods.
Players get to choose from three different foods for their monster to try in each game day, adding a fun element of choice and discovery as they explore a huge variety of foods together!
Want to jump right in?
The Smell Table
Smell plays a significant role in whether we like or dislike the foods we try. At the Smell table, kids get to present foods to their monster for a good sniff—if their monster wants to smell it, of course – and their reaction tells you what they think!
Build observation skills as they watch how the monsters react! Trigger their imagination about food smells by asking whether it smells like a ‘pickle’ or ‘digging in the garden.’
The Listen Table
Does food make noise? Well, sort of! Sit down with Bub as he tries a few foods of your choice. Hear how the food makes that big crunching sound! I wonder what that would feel like to eat?
There’s a whole bunch of words used to describe the sounds, which helps expand vocabulary around food and familiarise with trying new things.
The Look Table
A big favourite with children, the look table lets players get up close with foods using a special magnifying glass. As they hover over the food, it magically turns into a cross-section of the real-life fruit or vegetable, allowing children to examine what the real food looks like.
Once you slice a food and take a look inside, some fruits and veggies look SOOO interesting. Will your monsters be wowed, or will they be a little overwhelmed? It’s OK to not be sure. Well done for exploring new foods!
The Touch Table
Roll some peas around a plate, feel how rough a pineapple is, and why does an aubergine squeak? Using ‘touch’, your monster can feel the unique qualities of each fruit and vegetable in a musical animated game.
The Taste Table
On this table, you might see food being chopped, prepared or cooked. Once foods are laid down on the plate, your monster gets to give it a try.
If your monster doesn’t want to eat the whole thing, that’s ok – will they give it a little lick instead? Following our gentle method of trying new foods, the monsters are gently encouraged to give things a little bite.
This works just like real life—helping kids feel comfortable trying new foods!
First, your monster watches another monster take a bite (maybe they love it, perhaps they’re unsure). Your monster watches, has a try and then lets you know what they thought about it. They might like it – they might not. Both reactions are totally fine – we all have different tastes.
As the game goes on, your monster tries the food again and they might start to like it a little more—just like real kids do! This is a fun, safe space to show that tastes can change over time.
Other fun things
The Growing Game
It’s not just about trying food — we also explore where food comes from. After the first day of play, Bub’s garden is unlocked, and players get to explore the garden and grow their own food from seeds.
Plant something, water it, and grow it to full height! Then harvest your crops so they’re ready for eating. Bub will help you prepare it!
The Sticker Book
Every time their monster has explored a new food, they get a sticker to collect in their sticker book! Kids can decorate the fruit or vegetable they’ve just tried with monster eyes, noses and arms. the book fills as they play so children can see their whole food journey!
In Dr Lucy Cooke’s research, stickers acted as a real motivator to try a tiny amount of something new each day and to improve children’s liking for that food.
The Monster Customiser
“When my daughter saw the Monster in a wheelchair she was ridiculously excited. “Look Mummy, it’s a Monster just like you! That’s the one I want to choose!” It really made my day to see wheelchair use normalised in such a simple way. That this wasn’t a “special” monster but just one that I as part of the usual lineup. So, thank you so much for you representation. As a new wheelchair user and a family that’s trying to navigate this new way of life, it means a LOT.”
Rebecca, one happy parent.
With Adventurous Eating, we wanted to include monsters that reflect our diverse audience, including options to have glasses, artificial limbs and wheelchairs. It wouldn’t be a Teach Your Monster game if children couldn’t make the monster THEIR monster.
Adventurous Eating is 100% FREE for schools!
All our games are completely FREE to play on computers for everybody, via our website!
The proceeds we receive from games sold in app stores go straight back into our games, helping us create more resources to help children learn. However, schools can also unlock the full version of the Adventurous Eating app for free with a verified school email address.
