Do your kids love their vegetables? If they do, please share your secret. If you’re like the rest of us, getting picky eaters to eat healthy is a constant struggle. There are a variety of strategies you can use to encourage your kids to try new food. One of them is this Healthy Eating Printable Activity Pack. Inside are 8 pages of FREE games and activities to help you teach your kids about healthy habits.
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Learning about food through play is a fantastic way to expose and investigate new foods with your kids, in a fun and non-confronting way. Once your kids can recognize a new food, then you can try putting it on their plate. Say goodbye to dinner time fights.
If you are organizing nutrition lesson plans for your class, you can also explore similar topics like food safety, food waste and physical education. All of these will help kids learn about the many different elements that contribute to a healthy lifestyle.
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More Nutrition Activities for Kids
Here are some more healthy food activities to try. Explore the many wonderful nutritious foods there are through crafts, sensory play and more free printables.
- Fruit Stamp Art for Kids
- Vegetable Garden Sensory Bin
- Vegetable Lacing Cards – Free Printable
- Veggie Building – STEM Challenge
- Free Fruit Matching Game
For more ideas, check out these 16 Healthy Eating Activities for Kids.
What’s inside the Healthy Eating Printable Activity Pack for Kids?
This collection of healthy eating printables has different activities to suit kids of all ages. So no matter if you’re teaching toddlers, preschoolers or older kids. There’s something for everyone inside.
Flashcards
These flashcards are great to use on their own as well as with the other healthy food activities in this pack. Learn the names of some common foods and let your child’s vocabulary explode.
Using flashcards is a fight-free way to introduce your kids to new foods, particularly if they’re picky eaters. I find that the best way to introduce a new food is through play. Let your kids see how it is different, talk about how it tastes, and smells, without the pressure of making them taste it right away.
When your child recognizes the new food and is familiar with it, they won’t be so frightened when you put it on their dinner plate.
You can also use these healthy food printables as a base for different card games. Print it out twice and you can play memory games, go fish and more.
Healthy and Unhealthy Food Sort
We’re allowed to enjoy every kind of food we want. But if we want to be healthy there are some foods that we can’t eat every day.
The aim of these healthy and unhealthy food free printables, is to teach our children to recognize what food is healthy (everyday food) and what food is not (sometimes food/ or junk food).
Using the words sometimes food instead of “bad food” takes away the notion that we are “naughty” or “failures” for eating a sometimes food.
If you want to know why this is important, then read Your Childs Secret Companion, The Inner Voice. It explains why using negative words to describe certain behaviors affect your child’s self-esteem and emotional regulation.
In this activity you’re going to encourage your children to sort the food pictures into the healthy and unhealthy foods category. This activity is a great addition to your healthy living lesson plans.
Sort the food into Colors
Eat the rainbow. It’s a simple way doctors and dieticians tell us to eat a balanced diet. Eating a large range of colors is an easy way to ensure that we are eating a variety of essential nutrients.
This healthy eating sorting activity teaches children to sort the different colored foods into correct groups. This simple activity helps with color recognition, sorting, and to expect different colored foods on their plates.
Make a Healthy Eating Plate
This is one of my favorite printable healthy food activities for preschoolers because it’s all about creating a healthy meal. Focusing on how much of the different types of food to put on your plate.
The make a plate play idea is a great activity that teaches portion control. A basic strategy to use when focusing on healthy eating for kids is to divide your plate into portions. Half the plate should be made up of fruits and vegetables, one quarter should consist of lean protein, and the remaining quarter should consist of whole grains.
Dividing the plate into these fractions is a simple introduction to some basic math, as well as teaching healthy eating habits that they can use for the rest of their lives.
Encourage your kids to place the food pictures into the different food groups on the plate printable provided. As they do this, they will see how much of the plate is dedicated to each food group.
I Spy
This I Spy printable is a great activity to keep for restaurants or quiet time. All you need to do is count how many of each fruit or vegetable there are and write the number in the space provided.
Children get to practice counting, as well as visual discrimination with this delicious looking game.
Printable activities like this are a fun way to have a meal out without the need for any screen time.
Exploring the Food Groups
Children are fantastic at recognizing fruits and vegetables, but that’s only two of the food groups that there are.
Learn about all of the different food groups and practice sorting with this printable puzzle. Place the different types of food into the correct group, (dairy products, whole grains, protein, fruits and vegetables).
This is a great way to start off your collection of food printables for preschool.
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