Play with Your Produce
Looking for some fun ways to get kids to eat healthy? Try one of these games:
Fresh Faces
Create funny edible faces with fresh fruit and vegetables. Start with a circle of cheese. Then, decorate with fruit, vegetables and crackers to make facial features including hair, eyes, nose, mouth and ears. For an additional educational element, encourage the children to choose foods that will keep that body part healthy such as carrots with vitamin A for healthy eyes or broccoli for healthy hair. It makes healthy choices creative and fun and provides the opportunity to discuss the vitamins and minerals provided by fresh produce. Combined with the cheese and crackers this creates a complete meal that kids love to help make and eat.
Healthy Bingo
Create a Bingo game board that’s divided into two vegetable columns, two fruit columns and an exercise column. List different fruits, vegetables and exercise activities in each box. When a child eats one of the fruits or vegetables, or completes an exercise, they get to mark out one of the boxes. The first child to declare a Bingo, wins. As a prize, they get to pick a fun activity for the family to do.
Alphabet Soup
Create a chart with all the letters on the alphabet. As kids eat a new healthy food beginning with a letter of the alphabet they write it on the chart. Under the word or words they may draw a picture of why it is healthy. For example they may draw a picture of Popeye if they ate spinach that day, representing the iron found in this particular type of produce. When each letter of the alphabet is filled in, you can challenge each child to create a recipe from their five favorite ingredients on the list. The favorite among each recipe submitted is the winner. This game encourages children to think outside of the box when it comes to using fruits and vegetables, allowing them to use their creativity in their own recipes. It will give them a sense of pride in a personal accomplishment as well as educate them as to why these healthy foods are important to us. Fruits and vegetables do not just have to be a stand-alone dish. Encouraging children to experiment with different shapes, colors and flavors of fruits and vegetables will take the monotony out of the plain old pile of peas that gets pushed and scooted around the plate.
Veggie Tails
Draw or print out pictures of various types of fruits and vegetables. Chose someone to start the game. The one who has been selected as the “grocer” selects one picture from the pile of photos and pins it to the back of the “customer’s” pants. The rest of the group knows what the fruit or vegetable is, but the “customer” doesn’t. The audience takes turns giving clues as to what the produce is and the “customer” tries to guess correctly. Kids always enjoy that which they know more about. Therefore, learning different descriptions, recipes and anecdotes about fruits and vegetables might go a long way in having children give fruits and veggies (especially ones they have never tried) a chance.
The Rainbow of Fruit Scavenger Hunt
This is a fun game to play in the car (or on a field trip). Each person in the car has a bowl, which contains 3 purple grapes, 3 red strawberries slices, 3 blueberries and 3 green honeydew melon chunks. The first individual to spot a red car gets to eat a strawberry from his or her bowl. The first person to see a green light gets to eat a green melon chunk. The first one to spot a purple shirt on someone in another car or on the street gets to eat a purple grape. The first person to point out a blue pick-up truck gets to eat a blueberry from his or her bowl. Whoever empties their bowl first wins the game! The winner gets a prize. Eating fruits of different colors gives your body a wide range of valuable nutrients. This game encourages kids to eat different types of fruit..
Produceagories!
This game takes place around a table. The proper amount of fruit and vegetables that needs to be consumed each day to maintain a healthy lifestyle is cut and laid out in separate plates. There are two bowls on the table, one that is labeled fruits, and the other is labeled vegetables. Each player is timed and takes turns placing the fruits and vegetables in the corresponding bowls. The player who correctly places the produce in their correct category bowl in the fastest amount of time, wins! At the end of the game, everyone gets to enjoy and snack on the all of the produce. This game teaches children how to differentiate between fruits and vegetables and how much of each needs to be eaten on a daily basis in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Plant Your Own Veggie in the Garden
Gardening is a excellent way to get kids to be healthy eaters. This can either be done at home or in the classroom. Take a trip to buy seeds together and plant them in your garden. Let the kids pick out the ones they want to plant. Then, when the veggies come in, they can harvest their own produce. You can plan a meal together and let the kids assist in the preparation of the food. Being involved in the process of growing the food makes kids feel invested in what they have done. So, of course, they are going to eat it.
Produce Treasure Hunt
For this treasure hunt, we create clues to each fruit or vegetable like, “This fruit is high in vitamin C, pink on the inside, green on the outside and grows on a vine.” The kids choose which one they think it is and that produce has a clue for the next one, which they get after they eat the fruit. The first to the end receives a prize. This game makes for a fun, healthy snack. It encourages healthy eating because they often try new things when going on the “hunt” so that they can get the next clue. They also learn a lot about each fruit or vegetable.
