We’re putting together a range of fun activities for kids, to get them started learning about healthy food! Use these activities as conversation starters to help you keep talking with your kids about healthy food, and the benefits to their health.
Click on one of the pictures below to download the printable PDF.
Printable Thinking Activities
Kindy, Year 1 and Year 2
Year 3 and Year 4
Year 5 and Year 6
Cooking at Home
A message for Mum & Dad:
The recipes provided here are designed to be simple and aimed at getting kids into the kitchen. For this reason, some use sugar, some use dairy, some use gluten products etc. The aim is get children experiencing making foods that taste yummy so they realise they don’t really need packet foods.
Note: If you are already on the path to sugar free, dairy free, gluten free, paleo, etc, please modify these recipes to suit where your family is at.
Research Experiments
A message for Mum & Dad:
The aim of The Root Cause education programs is always to get your children talking to you about food and health. To this end, these research and experiment projects are designed so your children learn simple messages about food and health. Some projects will require a little input from yourself, but regardless of the level of input required, we’d ask you to use the opportunity to have conversations with your children about what they are learning.
Food Education Games
Taste Testing
Food Education – it’s the key to changing the crisis that’s facing Children’s Health.
Have some fun with your children and get them to taste test loads of fresh fruit and vegetables by having a taste testing game. Here’s how you play:
- Get your child excited by talking about playing a fun taste testing game
- Print off the Taste Testing Game Sheet – you may wish to print one off for yourself too
- Cut up fruit and vegetables into small bite sized pieces – 2 to 3 pieces of each
- Place each different fruit or vegetable into individual holes in a muffin tin or ice cube tray. Or lay them out in the rainbow of colours on a plate
- Explain the game is about tasting each piece at least once, then they can circle smiley face if they like it, sad face if they don’t. They may need your help with this step. If they don’t like it, don’t make a fuss, let them move onto the next piece.
- At the end of the game, talk to them about what they liked and didn’t like, and why they liked it and didn’t like it. If they aren’t sure, ask if they can try again and let you know. You could also ask them if you can try a piece.
The idea of this game is to just simply to get more fruit and vegetables in front of your children. You may be surprised with some they like. Start adding the ones they like into their lunchbox and making them more available at dinner time – perhaps as finger food. The more they see it, the more normal it will become.
Once they are use to seeing more of these vegetables, gradually add in some of the other ones they didn’t like. Remember, most of us taste with our eyes first, children are no different. Sometimes they will say I don’t like a food without even trying it, sometimes they will say they don’t like it after trying it. But research shows, it takes somewhere between 7 to 12 times of tasting a food before a child determines if they really like it or not. So keep trying.
Shopping Lists
In The 5 Minute Healthy Lunchbox System™ eCourse, we spend considerable time working on getting the kids involved in choosing what they want in their lunchbox, cooking in the kitchen and shopping. One of the incredible mums (Kellie) who enrolled into eCourse designed these shopping lists for her daughter.
When they go shopping, her daughter’s job is to choose the fruit and vegetables from the chart, then cross them off when they put them in their basket or trolley. Kellie suggests laminating the lists so you can reuse them, and she also rotates between the cartoon ones and the real pictures.
We hope you enjoy them. And, thank you so much Kellie.
Rainbow Fruit & Vegetable Template
Use this Staple Fruit & Vegetable Template to get your children to take ownership in what fruits and vegetables for you to serve (remember, you have the power, but this is a game of letting them think they are telling you what they want).
Ask them to choose AT LEAST 1 fruit and 1 vegetable from each colour of the rainbow. Then start having regularly – either in their lunchbox or at dinner, or better still, both. Once they are use to having these regularly, add in a new one or play the game of asking them to choose a new one to try. Have fun!
Code Cracker
This is a little game designed by our 9 year old daughter Indrani. One day when I was asking her what she wanted in her lunchboxes this week, she told me to wait a few minutes whilst she thinks about it. Then she came back with this Alphabet Symbols Code sheet and a handwritten note with these codes on it.
She told me to crack the code to work out what she wanted in her lunchbox. Rather than succumb to what my brain was telling me (for the love of god, just tell me what you want!), I rolled with it and discovered what she wanted in her lunchbox for the week. And do you know what? It was actually quite fun for me, she loved it, and we had no dramas with our lunchboxes this week.
Here’s how you can play:
- Print off the Alphabet Symbols Code Sheet
- Now ask them to what choices they want in their lunchbox this week, and write them down for you in code
- You then need to use the Alphabet Symbols Code Sheet to crack their code to work out what they want in their lunchboxes.
Tip: Give your children 3-4 choices for each of the following – this way you can ensure they are making choices that are healthy.
- at least one fruit
- at least one vegetable
- 1 healthy snack (eg. yoghurt, dips, cheese, crackers, homemade cakes muffins or muesli bars)
- lunch main include a quality protein (to keep them full)