Teaching nutrition to kindergartners can help them make healthier food choices during their childhood and into adulthood, according to research findings reported by Nutrition Explorations website. Although these nutrition activities in kindergarten will simply touch the surface, they will begin to open students to healthy food choices and will set the stage for future learning.
Collect Your Daily Needs
Have plastic foods and empty food containers placed throughout the room. Divide students up into groups of two or three. Then give each group a bag that they will use to collect their food choices.
Have the students gather foods from around the room that will help them achieve their daily nutritional needs. Ask the students to spread their chosen foods out onto the floor in front of them after they have finished their collections. Go from group to group and talk with them about the foods they choose.
Discuss healthy choices such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Help them understand why some foods could have been left on the shelf at the store. Talk about how unhealthy foods can lead to heart problems, feeling tired and cavities in their teeth.
Taste Test
Exposure to healthy foods is lacking for some children; therefore, having a taste testing can help kids learn to appreciate the taste of healthy foods. Set up tasting stations with small paper cups to hold the foods. Prepare healthy foods such as cooked beans, brown rice, berries, oranges, broccoli, tomatoes, whole grain noodles and oatmeal. Divide these taste testing options among the cups at each individual taste testing station around the room. Above each taste testing station have a sign with pictures of different ways the individual food helps the body, such as a heart above the oatmeal and stomach over the beans.
Have the kindergartens go around the room and taste every food. As they taste the foods, have them rank them on a good to bad taste scale ranging from 1 to 5. Let them share their taste testing experience with the whole class after they are done tasting.
Go Farming
Taking kindergartens on a field trip to a farm can help increase their awareness of where their food comes from. Find a small or family farm in your area that farms plants and animals and ask them to show your students the different sources for food. While you are at the farm, talk with the students about what types of specific nutrients are in the different foods available on the farm.
Make a Healthy Stew
A stew can be made out of almost everything; the key is that foods are left to cook together for an extended period of time. Ask each student to bring in a specific healthy ingredient for the stew such as sweet potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, brown rice, beans, baby spinach leaves, vegetable stock and any other healthy ingredients the class decides on. Mix all these ingredients together to taste using about 4 cups of vegetable stock in a slow cooker on low heat for half the school day. Serve the stew to the students and talk with them about the nutrients contained in the stew they made.
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