Healthy Eating

Communication and Language :

At snack time, introduce some different fruit for children to try. Encourage children to describe what the fruit looks, feels, smells and tastes like. Introduce the names of the fruit and descriptive words, such as juicy, sweet, bitter, soft and chewy. Create a role-play supermarket for the children to explore. Talk about the food and drinks in the supermarket and vocabulary used when ordering. Invite children to use talk to organize their play as they take on different roles.

Personal, Social, and Emotional :

Talk about healthy eating. Use a puppet or soft toy as a prompt to discuss how to eat healthily. Encourage the children to tell the toy what they need to do to make healthy choices. During snack time, talk about rules that help keep us safe and healthy. For example, washing hands before eating, not running around while eating, only choosing one snack to eat and throwing away rubbish.

Physical Development:

Decorate some bikes or scooters to be food delivery services! Provide role-play food along with bags or baskets and invite children to practice moving the wheeled toys to deliver food around the outside area. Provide some play dough for children to use to make role-play food. Provide knives and forks, spoons and scissors for children to use to mold, shape and cut the play dough food.

Literacy :

Play this silly soup phonics game to explore initial sounds. Sort some cards into the bowl that start with the same initial sound. Invite children to identify other items that could also go into the silly soup based on the initial sound. Explore rhyming words using Pyramid Food Pictures. Talk about the rhyming words as you match the cards together.

Mathematics :

Slice some potatoes in half and trim the cut ends into different 2D shapes. Invite children to dip the potatoes into paint and talk about the shapes they can print. Provide a balance scale and a variety of real or role-play vegetables for children to weigh, compare and discuss.

Understanding of the World:

In a large activity tray, provide some fruit and vegetables for children to investigate. Provide spoons, bowls, magnifying glasses and large tweezers for children to use as they use their senses to explore the food items. Identifying healthy and unhealthy.

Expressive Arts and Design:

Invite children to explore colours and colour mixing to create shades of paint to use when painting fruit pictures. Look at some fruit and invite children to mix paints to create the colours they need for their favourite fruit. Provide sheets of paper along with pens or crayons for children to use to design a placemat. Invite children to decorate their placemat, which can then be laminated.