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NUTRITION THEME

CRAFTS:

Food Art
Material: Baking sheet, Flour or salt
Sprinkle flour or salt over a baking sheet. Show your child you can draw in the flour with your finger. Draw letters, numbers, shapes. Play hangman or other common games in the flour. Draw initials of favorite videos or movies and have child guess them.

Good Food Collage
Make a "good food for their body" collage out of pictures from magazines. They might even want to hang them on their own refrigerator to remind them which foods are healthy.

Pudding Paint
Material: Pudding
Directions: Adult prepares pudding ahead of time or has children help make if instant. Allow child to finger paint with the pudding on a plastic lined paper or waxed paper. Clean up is fun because it is edible.

Paper Plate Meals
Have the children look through magazines to find pictures of different kinds of foods. Then have them cut out the pictures and glue them onto paper plates to make 'breakfasts', 'lunches' or 'dinners'.

Pizza Collage
Materials Needed: Round piece of tag board, Glue, Red tempera paint, Yellow & white Basket grass or yarn scraps, green, red, and black felt, brown scraps of paper
Procedure:
1. Mix red tempera with glue. Let children paint tag board with red glue.
2. Tear brown scraps of paper and crumple them. Stick them to tag board (sausage). Use green felt (peppers) red felt (tomatoes) black felt (olives) Easter grass or yarn (cheese).
3. Presto -- pizza!

Salt Clay
One of our most natural resources, salt also makes for fun art!
Material: Mix: 1 1/2 cups of salt, 4 cups flour, 1 1/2 cups water
Direction: When dough forms a ball around the spoon. knead the dough well, adding water if it is to crumbly. Set the oven at 150 degrees Celsius and bake until hard (keep an eye on it in the oven). This can be painted with paint and decorated if wanted (allow to cool first).

GAMES & ACTIVITIES:

Body Builders
Use this game to discuss healthy food choices. Make sure you emphasize that cakes, cookies, and pop are fine occasionally, and as long as people are eating their proper daily intake of healthy food.
Equipment: boxes; food containers, or pictures of food
How to Play: Divide your group into teams. At the end of the room place a large box full of empty food containers or pictures of food cut from magazines. (Let your Children help you prepare for this game by cutting out the pictures.) Include a mixture of both nutritious and junk foods. For example, include empty milk cartons, egg cartons, chocolate bar wrappers, a picture of a fast food hamburger, a cake box, and more. The first child in each team runs to the box, and chooses a food. If the food is nutritious, then he'll have energy to run full steam back to his team. If the Child chooses a junk food item, then he has to crawl slowly back to his team. (Make sure all teams have to choose one or two junk food items.) When players return to their team, they tag the next member who races for the food bin.

Fishing for Good Foods
Children can cut pictures from magazines (or for the little ones have them already cut) from the five basic food groups. Have the children glue these pictures onto a fish shape cut from construction paper. Slip a paper clip onto the front of each fish.
Make a fishing pole from a dowel and tie a magnet onto the end of the string. Label five small buckets with the name/picture of each food group. Have the children try to catch a fish and encourage them to decide which group the food belongs to and then put the fish in the correct bucket.

Hanging Carrot Garden
Material: Large carrot, Knife, Absorbent cotton, Water Dish, Wooden skewer, Potato peeler, Thread
Direction: Cut a section about 2 inches from the top of the carrot. Leave any leaves or stalks attached. Stand the cut end in a dish of water on top of the absorbent cotton.
Once shoots have sprouted, remove and scoop a hollow bowl into the end of the carrot using a potato peeler. Push the wooden skewer through the top half of the carrot. Tie the same size length of thread for each side of the skewer.
Hang the carrot up in a sunny window and fill the inside "bowl" with water. The shoots will grow up to the light, and you will soon have a hanging garden!

Potato Hop
Materials: Brown construction paper, 
What to Do: Cut ten large potato shapes brown construction paper and number them from 1 to 10.Tape the shapes to the floor in the proper sequence. Then let the children take turns hopping one potato to the other as everyone recites the rhyme.
One potato, two potato,
Three potato, four
Five potato, six potato,
Seven potato, more.
Eight potato, nine potato, Here is ten.
Now let's start all over again. 

Root-Top Garden
Material: Any raw root vegetable (carrot, turnip, parsnip, beet), Knife, Large dish or shallow platter, Clean pebbles
Direction: If the vegetable has leaves trim them. Leave about 1/4 inch stem. Slice off about 1 inch from the base of the stem. Put root tops in platter with enough water to just cover the bottom, not over the top. Fill the spaces with clean pebbles. Put in a sunny windowsill. In two or three weeks you should have a leafy garden. Keep it well watered.

Taste Testing
Material: Various food items, Blindfold
Direction: Cut up and clean various food items. Blindfold your child and have him/her taste and smell different foods. Have him/her describe the various tastes, smells and textures before they guess what it is.

Vegetables
Questioning: I want to eat this vegetable. What do you think I should do to prepare it? If I want to cut it, what should I use?
(hide the pepper)Do you remember what color the pepper is? What parts of the pepper do you think we can eat? What parts can't we eat? Can you think of any vegetables with seeds we can eat? Can you think of any vegetables with skins we can't eat? If we all wanted to taste a piece, how many pieces would we need?
How is this pepper (red) different from this pepper (green)? How is this pepper different from a carrot/potato? How does it taste? What are some of the ways we can eat peppers? (use other kinds of foods)
 
 

SONGS:

Basic Food Groups
Here are the food groups:
Dairy, bread, and meat
And don't forest that vegetables
Are important for you to eat.
Have a food from each food group
Each and every day,
And you'll grow strong and healthy -
Good nutrition is the way!

Cheese Please
(tune 3 blind mice)
Cheese, cheese, cheese we love cheese
Please, please please give us cheese
We like white cheese oh yes we do
Orange cheese taste wonderful too
Yellow cheese is for me and you
Oh, give us cheese 

Vegetable Soup game like London Bridges
We are making vegetable soup
Vegetable soup, Vegetable soup
We are making vegetable soup
Now put in the (vegetable of choice).
Take the ________and stir it up,
Stir it up, stir it up,
Take the ________and stir it up
While making vegetable soup.
 

STORIES:

Have any good stories? Let us know!
 

FOOD SUGGESTIONS:

Fruit Plate (lunch or snack)
Give each child a paper plate and sliced fruit. Ask them to create themselves using the slices of fruit. Example grapes for eyes, sliced apple for eye brows, banana sliced lengthwise for a mouth and a kiwi slice for a nose. This presents an ideal time to discuss the importance of eating well to maintain healthy bodies. When their creation is finished they may eat the fruit plate for snack!

Melon Bowl
Watermelon & Various other melons
Knife Melon ball scoop or small ice cream scoop
Adult cuts a watermelon in half. Have kids scoop out the inside using an ice cream scoop or melon baller. Cut open other melons and have kids make balls with the melon ball scoop from the other melons. Fill the watermelon with balls from the various melons. This makes a great summer snack or dessert.
 

TIPS/NOTES: