Imagine Toys Blog

Anyone else have kids who are perfectly content with a diet of crackers?

I like to call them crackeritarians. 

Because of this, I'm constantly trying to find fun daily learning opportunities about health and nutrition. For kids, and adults, knowledge seems like the best way to encourage making better food choices.

Start with picture books that encourage conversation about where foods come from and how they work in your body. Books like . . .

Yummy Yucky by Leslie Patricelli

How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food by Jane Yolen

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

I will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child

Little Pea by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food by Stan and Jan Berenstain

Continue learning by playing with your food. Pretend play restaurant, or kitchen. Use pretend wooden food like this Biofino Vegetable Basket, the Healthy Gormet Pit Pocket Lunch, or the Haba Fried Eggs shown above.

Other fun food learning ideas include:

• Sort foods into colors.
• Use cookie cutters to make shapes out of your food.
• Practice cutting playdough with a plastic knife. 
• Make play dough foods for your pretedn restaurant or pretend bakery.

How do you get your children to eat their vegetables?