10 Fun and Engaging Activities to Teach Healthy Eating Habits in Preschool

Preschool is a pivotal time to instill healthy eating habits in children. Integrating nutrition concepts early on, through fun, hands-on activities, empowers them to build a lasting, healthy relationship with food. These activities can be seamlessly woven into the daily routine of any child care or preschool setting.

MyPlate Champions: Pledging to Eat Healthy and Be Active

Encourage children to become "MyPlate Champions" by pledging to eat healthily and be active every day. This involves finding enjoyable ways to move their bodies for at least one hour daily. Make learning about nutrition fun!

Practical Tips for Parents and Caregivers

Here are some practical tips for parents and caregivers on what and how to feed their kids:

Start the day with fruit at breakfast.
Serve a healthy snack of raw veggies and hummus. Hummus is a Middle Eastern dip made from blended chickpeas, also known as garbanzo beans.
Go easy on the salt. Serve fresh foods when possible or low-sodium packaged foods.
Sweeten foods with fruit. Mix fruit into plain yogurt, cooked oatmeal, and smoothies to sweeten without adding sugar.
Perk up plain water or seltzer water with lemon, lime, or orange slices.
The nutrients in dairy are important for all ages. Serve foods like low-fat or fat-free dairy milk or yogurt. Need an alternative? Offer lactose-free dairy milk or yogurt that's low-fat or fat-free.
Start the day with vegetables. Add leftover cooked vegetables to an omelet or breakfast wrap.
Add protein to a salad. Grilled chicken or shrimp adds tasty protein to a salad of mixed greens.
Serve nuts, seeds, and fatty fish like tuna, salmon, and sardines.
Switch up pizza night. Create individual, homemade pizzas on whole-wheat English muffins or tortillas. Or, serve a traditional pizza using a pre-made whole-wheat flour.

Fun Food-Related Games and Activities

Food-related games and activities are a great way to expose children to new and non-preferred foods in a fun way, especially for fussy eaters or children who are hesitant about trying new foods.

Creative Food Play: Provide children with a piece of A3 paper to create their own poster or placemat. Allow them time for creative play with pretend foods. You can make a “food cupboard” out of a large piece of cardboard by folding in both side edges to form doors.
Singing Songs: Singing songs can be a fun way to talk about different foods with children. Use a food or nutrition-related song.
Incursion Activities: Follow up an incursion with an activity that builds on the children’s learning, such as class discussions, drawing pictures, or tasting foods relating to the incursion topic.
Mystery Food: If using real fruit and vegetables, you can place a fruit or vegetable from the bag in their hands, then ask them to guess what the fruit or vegetable is. This activity encourages children to become familiar with different foods.
Matching Game: Children take half the cards each but don’t look at their cards. When the cards match, the children need to call out the name of the matching food. The game ends when a player runs out of cards. You can offer some cut-up pieces of the foods to allow children a piece to taste if they wish.
Veggie or Herb Garden: Having a veggie or herb garden at your center is a great way to teach children about where food comes from and how it grows. Pick where and how you’ll establish a vegetable or herb garden - will you have a planter box, or a pot?
Cultural Foods: Teach children about different cultural foods. It may be an opportunity for them to learn about new foods that they haven’t seen or heard of before. This is a fun way to teach children about cooking as well as different cultures and cuisines. This activity can also highlight that all foods can be eaten at any time of the day. There a few ways you can do this activity and perhaps run a few different activities throughout the day or week in your center. Choose a culture and relevant dish of foods to discuss, draw, or cook.
Food Discussions: Create ongoing discussions about food using books and stories. You can also display posters about different foods and drinks around the room. Are You Eating Something Green? You can display posters of all kinds of foods from the five food groups, such as fruits and vegetables.

Engaging Toddlers in Meal Preparation

Involving children in meal preparation may help to develop healthy eating behavior not only for picky eaters but for all children.

Read also: Preschool Nutrition Activities

Meal Planning: With your child, look at pictures of meals in recipe books or online (parent-approved recipes, of course) while you are meal planning. There are also many toddler cookbooks that include some simple recipes for parents and toddlers to prepare together. Have your little one pick out a recipe to be one of the family’s weekly meals.
Grocery Store Trip: Take a trip to the grocery store with your toddler. Have them pick out a fruit or vegetable to bring home based on their favorite color. Ask them what the food feels like and smells like. Prepare it at home to put on their plate at mealtime. If possible, let them help prepare it as well!
Washing Veggies: Set up your little one to stand over the sink and give them a clean washcloth to help you “wash” the vegetables or fruit. Be prepared for a wet mess! You can also set up a sensory/water table or bin that has a head of lettuce for them to wash and rip apart. They can then pat dry with a towel and put the lettuce in a big bowl.
Painting Vegetables: Paint vegetables using a pastry brush dipped in olive oil for parents to roast and serve.
Helping in the Kitchen: Set up your little one to help mix, sift, or count ingredients.
Snack Faces: Create a snack face using a rice cake with a thin layer of nut butter or cream cheese as the base. Have small bowls of shredded veggies (hair), thin veggie sliced coins (eyes), and sliced red peppers or orange sections for a mouth. Put out a variety of whatever veggies or fruits you have in the fridge and watch them create and then eat!

Food Crafts & Activities for Toddlers

You can also do activities with your little ones that involve food where they don’t actually eat the food, but simply play with it. The sensory interaction of just touching, seeing, smelling, and feeling a food will help to create a greater willingness to taste the food.

Finger Painting with Pudding: Have your toddler use their fingers to paint with all different color puddings. You can also dip broccoli florets, halved raw potatoes, or romaine heart nubs into pudding and then “stamp” the paper or plate with them. Give them some shredded coconut to toss on top of their creation.
Make Playdough with Oatmeal: Oatmeal playdough recipe: Mix one part flour, 2 parts dry oatmeal, and one part water. Mix ingredients together, adding more flour to achieve the consistency your little one likes.
Spaghetti Scissors: Cut cooked spaghetti or spaghetti squash with a toddler scissor. Use this as hair on a vegetable and fruit stick person!
Color Sorting with Fruits and Vegetables: On a piece of paper draw a bunch of circles using different colored crayons or markers and have your little one sort the fruits and vegetables according to color by putting them in the correctly colored ring.
Mystery Produce: Put different fruits and vegetables in a brown paper bag (or other opaque container) and let your child reach in to feel and guess what the produce is without looking.

Incorporating Nutrition into the Classroom

Sorting Games: You can use flashcards, food toys, or even real snacks from your pantry to create sorting games. Encourage your child to place foods into “healthy” and “sometimes” categories. Sorting teaches children to compare and categorize, which is a natural way for them to learn. By handling and placing foods into groups, they understand the difference between everyday foods and occasional treats.
Montessori Learning: Using real objects, toy foods, or three-part cards allows children to see, touch, and name the items, which builds both vocabulary and awareness.
Active Games: Games like “Healthy Food Relay,” pretend grocery shopping, or creating food collages are fun and effective. These activities combine movement, creativity, and discussion, making nutrition lessons exciting.
Classroom Integration: Food awareness is integrated into daily routines at Kids USA Montessori. Teachers use classroom sorting charts, cooking projects, and Montessori mealtime to teach children how to make healthy choices.

Eat Healthy, Be Active Initiative

Eat Healthy, Be Active is an initiative to improve young children’s health and well-being by teaching key nutrition and physical activity concepts. The initiative focuses on families and early childhood settings, including preschool, kindergarten, child care, and early learning classrooms, as well as family child care homes.

Healthy Bear Says, “Choose MyPlate.” Help Healthy Bear introduce children to MyPlate and the five food groups, and encourage children to identify food pictures and place them in the corresponding food group. Type of activity: Large Group.
Fruit Salad Foot Races. Lead children in a relay race as they run to collect pretend fruits for a fruit salad. Type of activity: Outdoor play.
Mystery Fruit Box. Encourage children to reach into a box, describe what they feel, and predict what fruit it might be. Type of activity: Math.

Key Strategies for Promoting Healthy Eating

Repeated Exposure: The single most effective strategy to get kids to eat healthy food is repeated exposure.
Pair with Familiar Flavors: Pair a new food with familiar flavors.
Start Small:
Get Kids Involved: Engaging kids in the meal prep process provides opportunities for little ones to touch, smell, and explore new foods.
Make Meal Time Fun:

Avoid these common mistakes:

Pressure children to eat.
Use food as a reward or to soothe emotions. Instead, use non-food rewards.

Practical Activities for Child Care Centers

Focus Food: Select a “focus” food you would like to introduce to the class over a 2 to 3-week period. Write the focus food on the top of each sheet, then prepare and serve the food in several different ways. Download the Try it, Taste it, Rate it!
New Food Tally: Identify several foods to be served in the child care center over the week that will be new to most of the children in the class. Give one tally each time a student tries one of the new foods. The goal for this activity is focused on the total tallies (tries) in the whole class for each food, but you could also add total new tries across all foods for each student.

Portion Sizes and Variety

Young kids have small bellies and generally need smaller servings to meet dietary recommendations. Help your child learn to eat the right amount by offering kid-appropriate portions at meal and snack time. Toddlers need a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy (or fortified soy alternatives) every day. It’s important to keep in mind that your child might not eat the exact amounts suggested at every meal, or even every day. THAT’S OKAY! Preschoolers should eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy (or fortified soy alternatives) every day. It’s important to keep in mind that your child might not eat the exact amounts suggested at every meal, or even every day. THAT’S OKAY! Kids in elementary school are ready to learn more about healthy eating and ways they can take charge of what they eat and drink. But offering a variety of healthy choices is still needed by parents! It’s important to keep in mind that your child might not eat the exact amounts suggested at every meal, or even every day. THAT’S OKAY!

Additional Activity Ideas

Fruit and Vegetable Sensory Bin: Fill a bin with different fruits and vegetables (real or toy replicas), along with scoops, tongs, and bowls.
Classroom Cookbook: Have each child share a favorite healthy family recipe.
Daily Nutrition Discussions: Aim to incorporate at least one small nutrition-focused activity into your daily routine. This could be as simple as discussing the snack of the day.
Allergy Awareness: Always be aware of any food allergies or dietary restrictions in your classroom. When planning activities involving real food, choose ingredients that are safe for all children or provide appropriate substitutes.
Family Involvement: Family involvement is key to reinforcing healthy habits. Send home a weekly newsletter with the "food of the week" and a simple recipe.

Integrating Nutrition into Circle Time

Sorting Play Food: Grab a basket of play food from the classroom kitchen area for the students to sort by food group. Talk about what foods go into which food groups and have the children guess what other foods might be included. Use colorful food group mini-posters found in the Nutrition Unit for Preschoolers. Pass out the play food (or food cards from the Nutrition unit if play food isn’t available) and then hold up a food group mini poster and see who has food to match that group.
Singing Nutrition Songs: Circle time is a great time to sing and move to songs about nutrition. Sing “Healthy Choices” to the tune of “Where is Thumbkin?” and encourage the students to hold up matching cards when the food group is called. Song and movement are great ways to get preschoolers involved in the learning process.
Counting Activities: Learning to use one-to-one correspondence is an integral preschool skill. Students need to understand that one number is assigned for each item they count. Incorporating authentic opportunities for counting and comparing numbers is easy when using these counting file folder games. Students can count and compare chocolate chips and pair them with the matching numbered cookie jar.

Utilizing Nutrition Units

This Nutrition Preschool Unit is the perfect way to introduce your preschoolers to food groups and good health. The unit includes complete lesson plans for 10 days of circle time, as well as additional literacy and math centers.

Read also: Healthy Eating Activities

Interactive Bulletin Boards: Once the students are familiar with the food groups, they are ready to put them into action. Interactive bulletin boards are a great way to put a student’s knowledge to the test. A bulletin board gives the students opportunities to talk with each other and discuss what foods they think are healthy.
Engaging Stories: There are so many excellent books written with nutrition in mind. A favorite is Gregory the Terrible Eater by Mitchell Sharmat. In this story, Gregory the Goat likes to eat fruits and vegetables and other (by his parents’ estimation) terrible foods. His parents try to convince him that he should eat more like a goat - shoelaces, cardboard boxes, and old rubber tires. Students find this hilarious!!

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