Hang a length of butcher paper on a wall at the children’s eye level.
Set out a variety of magazines and grocery store ads showing healthy foods.
Let your children look through the magazines and find the pictures of healthy foods to cut or tear out.
Have the children name the foods they have found as they glue the pictures to the butcher paper to create a healthy food mural.
FOOD PYRAMID You will need a Food Pyramid poster for this activity.
Hang up a Food Pyramid poster.
Discuss the different sections with your children.
Ask your children which section is the largest? Yes, Breads and Grains.
Ask your children which section is the smallest? Yes, Fats and Sweets.
Explain that we need foods from all sections to be healthy but we need less of the ones near the top of the pyramid.
FOOD PLACEMATS
Make a food placemat for each child.
Divide 9” x 12” pieces of construction paper into 6 sections.
On a white piece of paper draw pictures of the foods in the six food groups.
Make copies of the pictures and paste 6 pictures on each placemat, one in each section.
Cover the placemats with Contac paper.
Prepare snacks that children can place in the appropriate sections of their placemat.
How many sections did they fill?
FOOD SORT
You will need one of the placemats from the above activity for this game.
Cut from magazines small pictures of healthy foods.
Place the cutouts in a small ziplock bag or small box with lid.
Let your children take turns sorting the pictures and placing them in the appropriate section on the placemat.
HEALTHY FOOD CARD GAME You will need 24 small index cards for this game.
Draw a picture of a food on each card.
Draw four foods from each of the six catagories.
Mix up the cards and place them upside-down on the table or floor.
Up to four children can play this game.
Children take turns drawing cards.
If it is from a category that they do not have, they keep the card.
If it is from a category that they have, they place the card upside-down in a discard pile next to the draw pile and lose their turn.
Game continues around in a circle until one child has six cards, one from each category of food.
RAINBOW FRUITS
Arrange on a platter a rainbow of fruits. Red berries or watermelon, blueberries, orange slices or cantaloupe chunks, green grapes, purple grapes or plums and yellow banana slices (with skin still on).
Let your children choose one from each color and make their own rainbow line on their plate for a healthy fruit snack.
