Teaching Children About Food

Did you know that children grow one to two feet and double their weight between the ages of six and twelve years? That is why good nutrition is so important to fuel their growth and also to teach them lifelong habits. During the grade school years, 6- to 12-year-olds have begun to make food choices on their own. Parents and caregivers play a vital role in helping children develop healthful eating and active living habits to last a lifetime. The learning starts in the early years. There are so many different things children can learn about foods, beyond just names and types. Other concepts like everyone eats, we all can grow foods, and many foods around the world can be the same can be taught, and are just as important.

Kitchen Music Fun
While you have foods cooking, you can help pass the time by putting to use some empty boxes and cans for music making. Empty oatmeal boxes make fine drums. Empty salt boxes make fine rattles or maracas when filled with a handful of rice or beans. A coffee can filled with dry macaroni makes a good shaker, too. Add some pots to tap with metal spoons and some lids for cymbals. Sprinkle with a dash of your own imagination for a musical morning meal.

Developmentally: cooking is one activity in which we all have done with children or as children. It is an ideal vehicle for nutrition education. Cooking activities allow children to share the process of working toward a goal and sharing the fruits of their labors with friends and family. Cooking develops many concepts and skills; including, muscle development, language, mathematics, science, and socialization.

What do Animals Eat?
Different animals eat different things: monkeys eat bananas, elephants eat peanuts, rabbits eat carrots, bears eat honey, and so on. Your child might like to cut out pictures of different kinds of foods from magazines, glue them onto paper plates, and “Serve” them to his own stuffed animal friends.

A Bag of Mysteries
Fill a brown paper bag with different kinds of fruits – whatever is in season. Let your child feel one at a time, guess what it is, and take it out to see if the guess was right. Then choose one to have with a meal.

Developmentally: How many of us use our senses to help us work. Try this. The next time you are doing a particular task, maybe washing the dishes, close your eyes for a second. Do you notice how the rest of your senses take over? Suddenly you may notice how hot the water is, the feel of the wash rag, or the smoothness of the plate you are holding. You are using your other senses to help you work. Young children are the same way. This type of activity helps them build the “sensory” skills.

Smelly Boxes and Feelie Socks
 This activity is a fun way for young children to learn about the sensory characteristics of foods. It requires them to play detective, identifying foods using only one clue (sense) at a time.

  • Feelie Socks – Touch
    Place sturdy foods inside clean socks. Ask the children to put their hands into the socks and identify the foods only by touch. Talk with them about how the foods feel. Are they smooth, bumpy, fuzzy? Are they round, irregular, long, large, or small?

  • Smelly Boxes – Smell
    Place strong smelling foods inside opaque plastic containers with lids. Make slits in the lids (as in a piggy bank). Ask the children to identify the foods by smell alone. Ideas: lemons, onions, garlic, tuna, cotton balls saturated with vanilla.

  • Can You Believe Your Ears? – Hearing
    Ask the children to close their eyes and identify foods using only the sense of hearing. Examples: popcorn popping, soda water fizzing, apples or carrots crunching.

  • Mystery Solutions – Taste
     Stir flavoring agents (below) into plain water. Give each child four spoons to dip into the solutions for tiny tastes. Sweet: sugar, Salty: salt, Sour: white vinegar, Bitter: unsweetened grapefruit juice.

Food Creatures
 Imaginary or real creatures can be created using toothpicks and a variety of vegetables and fruits, cut up into small pieces. Cauliflower makes great sheep’s wool, squashes make shapely bodies for people or animals, fruit leather can be cut for hair or tongues.

Developmentally: Allow your child to pick out, bag, and weigh the fruits and vegetables they’d like to eat that week. Then, allow them the opportunity to creatively prepare their foods. Children are much more likely to try new foods when they are involved in picking or preparing it.

Edible Play Dough
 Combine one jar peanut butter with six tablespoons honey and enough non-fat dry milk to make a dough. Knead, roll, shape, and decorate with raisins, nuts, and sprinkles.

Developmentally: don’t try this activity with children under three years old. Some of the ingredients, like honey, nuts, or raisins are not safe.

Peanut Shell Puppets
Don’t waste those peanut shells! Use a marker to draw funny faces on empty shell halves. Then children can put the halves on their fingers and Presto! – peanut puppets.

Developmentally: This type of activity should not be done with children under three just because of the choking hazard. Also, some children in your care may have a dangerous allergy to peanuts.

Make Your Own Cookbook
As children become familiar with recipe ingredients and combinations, they might enjoy making up their own recipe collection. A set of 3”x5” cards and a special box or notebook can be used, with drawings or pictures of food cut from magazines as illustrations.

Developmentally: familiarizing children with the kitchen is a great way to reinforce healthy habits.

  • Try a new fruit or vegetable every week.
  • Add cut-up veggies (canned, frozen, fresh or leftover) to macaroni and cheese, pasta sauces, pizza toppings and soups.
  • Create a snack corner in your kitchen that is easily accessible to your child. Fill it up with healthy and safe foods for your child to pick out when he/she is hungry. A good example of things to keep on hand for your school age child could include such things as individual servings of juice, applesauce, nuts, beef jerky, crackers, and granola bars. In the refrigerator you could keep such things as potatoes (for microwave baking), oranges, apples, cheese, and hardboiled eggs.

A Treat for the Birds
You will need peanut butter, pine cones, bird seed, a knife for spreading, and string. Remove enough peanut butter from the jar to spread on the cones you have and place on a plate. Put bird seed in a bowl. Spread a pine cone with peanut butter, roll it in the bird seed, tie a string on its stem and you have a great treat to hang outside for your wild birds.

Yogurt Faces
A bowl full of yogurt can be fun to eat if children add eyes, hair, and so on to create funny faces. Some add-ons they might consider are pieces of cut-up fruit, carrot curls for hair, sprinkles, raisins, and crackers of different shapes.

Invisible Ink
 You will need a toothpick or Q-tip; paper; any of the following liquids: lemon juice, milk, or white vinegar; and an iron or lamp. Dip the toothpick into one of the liquids and write your message on paper. When your children or their friends want to read the secret note, iron the paper with a warm iron or hold over a warm lightbulb until the writing shows.

Water Glass Fun
Help your children fill glasses to different levels with water. Then let them tap each glass gently to hear the pitch. The pitch will change if more water is added or if water is poured out. The highest pitch comes from an empty glass. Provide a small pitcher of extra water and a “pouring out bowl.”

An Egg Trick
Place an egg (uncooked) in a glass of water. It will sink to the bottom. Dissolve two tablespoons of salt in the water – and the egg will float! The salt makes the water denser or heavier than the egg – whereas before, the egg was heavier than the water.

Musical Spaghetti
Have the kids in your care sit in a circle with one less chair than players. The extra person is “it” and stands in the middle. When the music starts, “it” walks around the inside of the circle and takes the hand of another player. That player comes along with him and then takes the hand of another player. The “spaghetti” continues to grow until the music stops. Players then drop hands and run for empty chairs. The person left standing becomes the new “it” and begins making another strand of spaghetti.

Spaghetti Science
You’ll need several different types of uncooked pasta and bowls. Sit with the kids and examine all the different types. Let the children fill bowls with water, measure a cup of pasta and drop it into a bowl. Soak the pasta overnight, then drain the water from the bowls. Have the children make observations about the pasta’s appearance before touching it; for example, it’s whiter and puffier. Let the children use their hands to “mush up” the pasta. Now the shapes are gone and what’s left is a white, sticky substance called starch.

A Food Mosaic
Your child can draw a design on stiff cardboard and fill in the spaces, one section at a time, with white glue. Place on the design a variety of macaroni, beans, rice, or sprinkle on bird seed.

Erasable Painting
Fill a small plastic bag with a small amount of ketchup, close the bag with tape, and flatten to smooth the “paint” evenly. Your child can use his fingers to “paint” on top of the closed bag, and erase his creation by just smoothing it over.

Thank you to Lisa Albert from the EPTSS Division for this month's activity!

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