Most kids like to wrap up a hearty play session with a snack to replenish energy – incidentally, this post-game feast is the perfect time to introduce important concepts about nutrition. This guide covers three educational games that will help your kids learn about healthy snack choices while enjoying their favorite snacks, a memorable combination.
3 Nutrition Games for Children
You can adapt these games for children of any age by changing the rules and asking harder questions.
1. Food Group Mix and Match
This is an easy game for little ones. As you’re preparing a meal or snack, let the children group the ingredients into their respective food groups. If they’re old enough to know about vitamins, you could let them sort the ingredients by vitamin content or try the same with calories. Every mistake is an opportunity to share a little bit of information about the foods that the kids are about to eat.
2. Playing Chef
Younger kids love to help around the house, and older kids like to learn new skills they can use to impress their friends. Cooking is a great activity for both age groups. Younger kids might have fun arranging the ingredients for a meal into a life-sized food pyramid, while older kids can enjoy flexing their creativity to come up with recipes that include one ingredient from each food group. Both of these activities let kids feel like they accomplished something that the entire family gets to enjoy – a healthy meal.
3. The Food-Source Scrapbook
Visual and hands-on learners will like this one. A food source scrapbook is a fun family project, pieced together from trips to the places where food comes from. Even magazine clippings will work great for creating a scrapbook. Your children can make a page for each of their favorite foods, along with pictures that depict where that food comes from.
Try to show the sources of all the ingredients, including salt mines or peppercorn vines. Include a map of the country of import if your family is concerned about environment in addition to health. They will learn a lot when they ask where popular snack foods come from and see the big factories / vats of byproduct standing in contrast to sprawling farms and open pastures.
Who said nutrition had to wait for health class? Schools don’t have time to make sure kids know the intricacies of the food groups and how they come together to form a healthy diet. The older kids grow the more freedom they receive in terms of food choices – and like any other freedom, children need the tools to use it responsibly.
