Healthy Food Hunt

Getting your child to eat fruit and vegetables can be a chore. This activity teaches her that certain foods are healthy and helpful for her body, and moreover, they taste good too! Your preschooler can scour the grocery ads, cut out foods, and make a healthy meal on a paper plate. As a side benefit, using scissors will help her motor skills as she learns to master this tool for kindergarten.

What You Need:

• Grocery ads
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• Paper plate

What You Do:

1. Have your child cut out pictures of many different kinds foods from the grocery ads.
2. Explain to your preschooler that fruits, vegetables, milk products, grains, and meat are healthy and help our bodies grow and be strong.
3. Help your child hunt through the cut-out foods and have her place the healthy foods in one pile and the non-healthy foods in another. As she does this, you can also reinforce vegetable and fruit names with her.
4. Ask your child to make a healthy dinner on a paper plate by picking some foods from the healthy foods pile and gluing them onto the paper plate to make a complete meal. She can even make extra healthy plates for other members of the family.
5. Talk to her about the choices she makes and ask her questions about why she thinks her meal will be nutritious and delicious. Feel free to help her if she need some guidance. When she's finished, she'll have "prepared" her very own healthy meal without dirtying a single pot or pan!

She can keep the healthy meal plates she's made to use for make believe games or to hang in the kitchen to help remind her of foods that are good for her. Hopefully, when it comes time to eat, your preschooler will recognize the different healthy foods on her plate, eat them, and know its helping her body to grow!