Making healthy food choices is an important skill for kids to learn early in life.
These days it is no longer enough just to eat well-balanced meals together as a family, parents need to take responsibility for their children’s healthy eating as it may affect them later in life.
According to Healthy Eating Advisory Services, below are some of the healthy games and activities for kids.
The veggie guessing bag
Try this activity to increase children’s recognition and awareness of different vegetables. Place some vegetables (real or plastic) in a bag (e.g. pillow slip). Ask children to feel inside the bag and guess which vegetables are there. As a variation, blindfold children and place a vegetable in their hands. Ask them to guess what the vegetable is by feeling, smelling and even tasting it.
Food tasting
Encourage children to take turns tasting new foods and describing to the group what the food tastes like. Children can also discuss the foods’ appearance, smell and texture.
Create a vegetable person or animal
Create a ‘vegetable person’ using real vegetables or pictures of vegetables. Help children use toothpicks to make their vegetable person stand up and be three dimensional. If using real vegetables, encourage children to eat their vegetable person for morning or afternoon tea.
Planting herbs or vegetables
Create a veggie patch and encourage children to water and care for the plants. Use the exercise as an opportunity to discuss where food comes from and how it grows. Some easy to grow, edible produce includes tomatoes, peas, beans, snow peas and herbs.
We are yummy snack makers
Use flash cards or cut out pictures of foods from brochures to make a healthy, tasty snack. Some examples are toast, cheese and tomato, fruit with yoghurt, capsicum and carrot sticks with mashed avocado, scrambled eggs with English muffins.
