Healthy Food Classroom Ideas
With childhood obesity on the rise, healthy eating habits should be encouraged from a very young age. While you cannot control the way your students eat, you can teach them how to choose healthier foods at home and at school. When your students go home and talk about their day, the conversation about healthy eating will carry over into their domestic lifestyle, inspiring families to make healthier choices.
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Healthy Classroom Snacks
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Classroom celebrations are often marked by the arrival of a few dozen cupcakes or brownies. While these sweet treats might be delicious, they do not promote a healthy lifestyle and offer no nutritional benefits. Send home a note to the parents of your class asking them to help you encourage healthy eating by contributing healthy snacks to birthdays and class parties. Suggest 100 percent fruit juice or low fat milk instead of sodas and artificially sweetened beverages. Yogurt parfaits, puddings, popcorn, fruit or fruit salad, vegetable trays with low-fat dip, and angel food cake with fresh fruit are all delicious, kid-friendly snacks.
Food Pyramid Display
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Create a large display on butcher paper or a bulletin board with the basic outline of the most up-to-date food pyramid published by the United States Department of Agriculture. Give students newspaper advertisements and magazines and ask them to cut out different foods and work together to place them under the correct category. Talk them through how many servings of each type of food makes for a balanced diet. To make the experience more personal, give each student their own copy of the food pyramid and ask them to mark off what they ate for dinner last night and breakfast and lunch today. Let the students who volunteer discuss their own eating habits and what they would like to change.
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Distribute Health Themed Class Calendars
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Many teachers and schools send home a monthly calendar with important "dates to remember" printed on it. Make this calendar page even more helpful by adding a healthy suggestion or thought to each day. You can discuss each day's tip with your class throughout the month. Make it a competition for students whose parents sign off on each tip they tried at the end of the month. Provide a prize for the student or students who participated the most. This is a great way to get your students thinking about healthy foods at school and at home.
"Gregory the Terrible Eater"
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Read your class the story of "Gregory the Terrible Eater," a goat who will not eat anything goats normally eat. Instead, he chooses to eat healthy foods but his family does not understand. Discuss with your students what would happen if they didn't choose to eat healthy. Accompany the lesson with a giant dice with different color paper or paint on each side. Let the students roll the giant dice and then ask them to name fruits and vegetables that come in those colors. Bring in examples of some fruits and vegetables your students may not have seen before -- you might be surprised how few they recognize.
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References
- Photo Credit vegetables image by cherie from Fotolia.com
