How do we enforce healthier food habits? By modeling and teaching children when they’re young! This week I shared with the four and five year old preschool and pre-k students why it’s important to eat growing foods so that we can be really strong.

We talked about why want to be strong, what growing foods are, what a balanced meal looks like, whole grains, eating the rainbow, drinking water and eating the right amount until our tummy feels full. We also talked about how important sleep is to get strong, and that moving (and dancing!) makes us happy and strong. And, how do we help our hearts get stronger? When we are kind to our friends it makes their heart strong; so everyone had a turn to make their friend’s heart happy and strong. We played various games to reinforce growing foods, movement and kindness and it was lots of fun!

Food Categories

Veggie story

Balanced Meal

Dancing

Growing foods

Growing food game

Creating a growing meal

Fruit puppets

Tip for the week: Try to keep healthy eating light and fun for your kids and also help them understand it, so that it doesn’t feel forced. When kids feel that they helped make the choice, they will be more excited to embrace growing foods and healthy habits.