February is Nutrition Month. Several activities for learning about foods and nutrition.

Objectives:

To help students learn the importance of nutrition in keeping them healthy.

Plan:

• Lesson 1: Being Healthy
• Lesson 2: Make a healthy food collage
• Lesson 3: Food Bingo
• Lesson 4: Food pyramid on the wall
• Lesson 5: Colors of food posters
• Lesson 6: How do you tell a fruit from a vegetable?
• Lesson 7: Play restaurant

Discussion:

1. What can we do to help our bodies stay healthy?(excersize, eat healthy, sleep, brush our teeth, take baths, wash our hands often)
2. What kinds of food help to keep us healthy?(fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk)
3. Is sleep important for our bodies?
4. Should we eat a lot of sweet foods and snacks? Why or why not? (cavities and they are not good for us)
5. What is your favorite food to eat??(pizza, cookies, chicken)
6. What is a fruit?
7. What is a vegetable?

Read any story about healthy living or healthy foods. Discuss the book.

Have posters up in the room with healthy habits on them: for instance children washing their hands, brushing their teeth and eating healthy foods.

Objective: To be able to name healthy foods.

Have many food magazines from local grocery stores for children to cut out pictures. Try to have as many colored pictures as possible. The children also need glue, scissors and a piece of construction paper to glue it on.

1. Talk to children about healthy foods.
2. Give them each some glue, scissors, and a piece of construction paper. Have them look through the brochures and magazines pictures for healthy foods they like to eat.
3. Then have them cut them out and glue them onto their piece of construction paper.
4. When they are all done they will be able to stand up one at a time in front of the class and tell the other students what they picked out and to point to the picture of that food item.
5. Hang them up around the room for parents and other teachers to see.

Objective: To learn how to play Bingo and learn the names of many different kinds of fruits and vegetables.

1. Before the day of the lesson cut out many different kinds of fruits and vegetables out of magazine pictures and glue them onto a piece of construction paper to make a Bingo card. Make enough cards for the number of children in your class. If possible have these cards laminated so you can use them often.
2. Then make up cards with names of all the fruits and vegetables you used on your Bingo cards for the caller to call out. When a child gets 3 or four in a row they call Bingo.
3. You might want to have stickers as prizes or nothing at all. The kids really enjoy this and they can learn new fruits or vegetables if you put pictures of unusual fruits of vegetables such as eggplants and Kiwi.

Objectives: To learn about the food pyramid and the different sections of it. Also for the children to learn what foods they should have the most of to keep them healthy.

1. Have a copy of the new Food Pyramid and make the pyramid shape on a wall.
2. Leave the pyramid squares all blank for the children to put in the food items. Have a piece of paper in each section that names that part of the pyramid such as breads.
3. Talk to the children about what the pyramid represents and what each section is.
4. Get out pictures of foods and have the children try to put the food in the correct section of the pyramid.
5. After they ldren about what the pyramid represents and what each section is.
6. Get out pictures of foods and have the children try to put the food in the correct section of the pyramid.
7. After they