Nutrition
Health and Nutrition Activities
- Plant a garden with your child by selecting items that will grow quickly and they will feel success in this endeavor.
- Design and plant an indoor herb garden or plant a cookie sheet full of grass. The child will have fun using the herbs for cooking or the grass to cut and grow!
- Use a simple recipe for making soup, a sandwich, or special drink. Teach your child some of the proper cooking terms. Learning to cook instills many skills for children so make it a regular part of your together time.
- Attend a Farmer’s Market and look at all the different vegetables. Name them for your child and talk about the colors and shapes. Purchase some to make a salad or soup that day.
- Paint with vegetables, especially those that are getting old. Many of them cut in half make great shapes for painting and the other half can be used to eat! Pour a little paint a paper plate and dip the vegetable slightly. Let the child “stamp” paper using different vegetables and colors. Make wrapping paper!
- Go the library and find books about health related topics such as nutrition, exercise, body parts, staying healthy and so on.
- Make a thinking tray each day for 5 days, for each of the five senses. Find objects in the home that are similar and relate to a particular sense. Make one for smell, touch, taste, hearing, seeing. Talk to your child about the particular sense that day and about each object on the tray.
- Make a booklet of emotions. Take your child’s picture using different facial expressions and talk about the feeling and what words to use when he/she feels like the picture. Use the book when your child just cannot say the word for how he/she feels.
- Have your child close his/her eyes and guess the sounds you make. Use household objects such as keys, coins, silverware, or a whistle. Tap on a pot with a spoon, snap your fingers or click your tongue. Learning to listen is an important communication skill.
- Blindfold your child and have him/her identify tastes and smells through some foods in the home. Have the child describe how the food tastes or smells (sweet, salty, bitter, sour, spicy or tangy) Try ice cream, pickles, yogurt, pretzels, lemon, apple, banana, etc.
- Reinforce the appropriate manners that your child should use at meal times and other important moments of the day.
- For a special occasion take your child to a restaurant and work on the proper behaviors and ordering appropriately. Putting manners to work in a real situation makes all the difference!
Exercise Activities
- Conduct a parade with your child, friends or neighbors. Play “follow the leader” or “Simon Says” by using different actions and including the names of different body parts.
- Put on some music and dance! Make is slow, make it fast, make it funny, or make it serious. Let loose with your child! This is a great form of total body exercise.
- Have your child draw a self portrait. The child can place body parts where they believe they should be without correction. Each 6 months have your child draw a self portrait and see how their image and knowledge of oneself changes. (These are wonderful to save and look at when your child is much older!)
- Outdoors find a safe and clear area to let your child run and run. Talk about how running feels, what the air feels like in the face, how fast a roadrunner can go, and what other animals can run. etc.
- Set up an obstacle course for your child indoors or out. Use chairs, blankets, steps, and other items to allow your child to jump over, climb on and so on to use the entire body in this activity.
- Set up a family exercise time each day or every other day. Vary the activities from stretching to riding bikes. Keep a chart and rely on each other to make it happen!
- Join a local club or the YMCA by getting a family pass to enjoy swimming and other physical activities important to good health.
Slime, electricity, bubbles, water, paint - these are all the Periodic Elements of Hands On Fun!
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