It’s never too early to get your little ones interested in a healthy diet! These activities are perfect for exposing young learners to nutritious food while also letting them have a little fun! From making veggie collages to creating 3D food pyramids, and participating in lettuce process art, these engaging hands-on activities will spark their interest in healthy food. So get ready to chop a few veggies and dig into our list of creative nutrition activities for your preschoolers!
1. Fun Food Faces
Food is always a good way to help bring learning to life! Your little ones will love using real fruits and vegetables to create funny faces! This is a great way for your preschoolers to make and enjoy a fun snack while showing them how to make healthy food choices.
Learn More: Preschools 4 All
2. Healthy or Not Sort
This is a great activity to practice categorization while also teaching your students about nutritious foods! Have them cut out pictures of foods from advertisements or magazines and then sort these into healthy and unhealthy food categories. This is the perfect hands-on project for stations or center time!
Learn More: Preschools 4 All
3. Vegetable Collages
Creating collages is always a hit with little ones! Give your students an outline of a vegetable and have them glue down different scraps of paper, stickers, and other small items to make the vegetable the correct color. These little veggies will make adorable displays for your bulletin board!
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4. Paper Lunch Boxes
These tiny, paper lunch boxes are perfect for helping students practice making good, healthy choices. Have your preschoolers use food cards or food pictures to fill their lunch boxes with good food choices. This will enhance their knowledge about food using a very familiar context!
Learn More: Sarah Paine
5. I Spy Fruits and Veggies
I spy a carrot! These easy-to-print pages are a fun and educational take on the favorite ‘I Spy’ game. Your little ones will love trying to hunt for the listed vegetables. This activity will spark interest in healthy foods and help them build their food recognition skills!
Learn More: And Next Comes L
6. Fruit and Veggie Artwork
This colorful art activity is a great way to teach about fresh fruits and vegetables. Your little ones will have a blast as they create their own works of art from these adorable food templates. Have your kiddies cut and color the fruit and then put their pieces together to form fun faces!
Learn More: Flickr
7. Eat The Rainbow
This fun activity reinforces the importance of eating a wide range of fruits and vegetables! Use construction paper to create a colorful rainbow and let your kiddos clip pictures from grocery ads or magazines to fill each color. Remind them to choose healthy foods that match the rainbow colors!
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8. Fruit and Veggie Shadow Match-Up
Vegetable shapes are perfect for teaching nutrition and pattern recognition! Have your students match the puzzle pieces or use clothespins and have them clip the pairs together for a little extra motor skill practice! Then challenge your kiddos by having them tell you the name of the veggie!
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9. Eating the Alphabet
Snack time anyone? Lois Ehlert’s beautifully illustrated book, Eating the Alphabet is a great choice for a snack time read-aloud! Your little ones are sure to learn the names of some new fruits and veggies! You could also skip the snack and have your students draw foods from the book that match alphabet letters.
Learn More: Primary Playground
10. Healthy Eating BINGO
Healthy snacks BINGO is a fun activity that your children are guaranteed to love! This BINGO game is focused on having them identify healthy foods. The great thing about these BINGO boards is they include examples from all of the food groups!
Learn More: Primary Playground
11. Beginning Sounds Clip Cards
This game is perfect for practicing beginning sounds! Have your little ones clip a clothespin to the beginning letter of the fruit or vegetable they hear. They might need a little support with this one, so be sure to review the food names and beginning sounds beforehand!
Learn More: Fun Learning For Kids
12. Grocery Store Dramatic Play Center
Get your shopping lists ready! Every preschool classroom needs dramatic play centers, and one of the most loved is the grocery store! Let your kiddies act as shoppers in the pretend supermarket! Don’t forget to add some blank grocery lists, a shopping cart, and some reusable shopping bags!
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13. Counting Fruit Clip Cards
Another fun clip card activity is this fruit-counting game! Your students will count the number of fruits on a card and clip the clothespin to the correct number shown on the side. This is great for developing fine motor skills and for practicing food recognition, counting, and number recognition.
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14. Nutrition Dice Game
Roll your way to healthy food choices! This activity is great to get your kids thinking about what a balanced meal looks like. Let your little ones roll the dice and then load up their plate by picking a delicious item that matches a food group! This is great to use in a whole group activity or at circle time!
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15. Fruits and Veggie Prints Painting
This cool hands-on printmaking craft is a lot of fun and an easy one to clean up! Cut open some fruits and veggies and let your students dip them in paint and stamp them down on paper to create interesting foodie artwork! Tactile activities like this are sure to be a hit with your preschoolers!
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16. Construction Paper Fruits and Veggies
This simple template can go a long way in teaching your preschoolers about food recognition and color matching! Simply tear construction paper up in the same color as these healthy foods and then let your little ones glue the pieces to the correct items to form their own fruits and veggies!
Learn More: Free Kids Crafts
17. Shape Pizza
Pizza is a favorite food for a good reason; kids love picking their own topping! This pizza activity is a great way to reinforce shape recognition, and is an awesome opportunity to talk about healthy options that can be added as pizza toppings! Buon appetito!
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18. Food Investigation
Making observations about some food is the perfect activity for your budding scientists! Let your kiddos add some healthy foods to these official-looking science tubes or use clear food containers then let them get up close and personal to closely examine and notice things about the foods. Show them what real scientists do by documenting their observations on an anchor chart!
Learn More: Play, Teach, Repeat
19. Grocery List Stamping
This exciting play center is sure to be a hit with your little grocery shoppers! They will love using food stamps to make a shopping list of healthy foods. This activity exposes your students to nutritious foods while also letting them put their own stamp on their grocery store experience!
Learn More: Sunny Day Family
20. Create Happy Plates
Another fun activity that will allow your preschoolers a chance to practice fine motor skills is the happy plate activity! Create sections on a paper plate for the different food groups and let your students have fun gluing magazine pictures or grocery store ads to fill their plates with a healthy meal!
Learn More: Meaningful Mama
21. 3D Food Pyramid
This one might take a little more prep but your preschoolers will love this 3D food pyramid! They can use grocery store ads or pictures from magazines to fill in each section of the food pyramid and learn more about each type of food. This activity is perfect for a whole group lesson that requires a little teamwork!
Learn More: Maria Kastrinaki
22. Favorite Fruit Survey
This activity is perfect for getting your kids moving and for boosting their communication and social skills! Encourage your little data collectors to move around the room and gather information about their friends’ favorite fruits. Next, after the data is collected, work together with your class to create a chart showing the most popular fruits!
Learn More: Sparkle Box
23. Food Group Sort
Learning about the food pyramid and understanding food groups can be tricky for preschoolers. This simple sorting activity is the perfect way to let your students practice placing items into different food groups. Let them use play foods, or to get them really excited, bring in some real food!
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24. Floor Food Pyramid
This hands-on food pyramid is a great way to bring learning to life! Tape a large food pyramid to the floor and have your students choose items that fit into each food group. Activities like this one incorporate more of the 5 senses and allow for movement, which is always good for keeping little learners engaged!
Learn More: Teacher Anna Rose
25. Big Boy Broccoli Craft
Let’s start a love of veggies early! This printable craft is a great way to teach kids about the value of eating super healthy, yet somewhat unpopular veggies like broccoli! You could even bring some broccoli florets for your children to enjoy while they create their own broccoli big boys (or girls)!
Learn More: DLTK’s Site For Kids
26. Healthy Foods Patterns
Identifying and making patterns is an important math skill for preschool-aged children. Just print and laminate these templates for a ready-to-go center that exposes your little ones to healthy foods while giving them practice with AB and ABC patterns! You could even create your own patterns using pictures of foods from magazines.
Learn More: Stay At Home Educator
27. Sight Word Books
These precious sight word books are printable and great to use in a preschool nutrition unit! The simple books review sight words while teaching your kiddies about each of the different food groups. Use these at circle time or center time and start building healthy habits early!
Learn More: US Department Of Agriculture
28. Tracing Worksheets
Tracing worksheets are great practice for handwriting and for letter formation. Your little ones will love these food-themed tracing sheets that are especially helpful for focusing on individual foods. This activity is also sure to give your little ones some extra support to recognize and practice writing their letters!
Learn More: First School
29. Create Your Own Garden
Growing your own garden can be very rewarding for your preschoolers! This activity requires a little more time and certainly some space, but watching vegetables grow will really help your little ones understand the life cycles of plants. Why not incorporate a literacy aspect by pairing this hands-on project with Gail Gibbons’s Growing Vegetable Soup book?
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30. Gregory, the Terrible Eater
This silly book is sure to have your preschoolers rolling on the floor laughing! They’ll love learning about Gregory, a goat who would rather eat fruits and veggies than more typical goat food like old shoelaces and boxes. Find out how this raucous goat finds a healthy balance!
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31. Build a Sandwich Kit
Your preschooler will love this sandwich-making activity with a healthy twist! Just print, cut, and laminate these cut-outs to inspire them to make a sandwich piled high with healthy ingredients. You can even have them pretend they are working at a famous sandwich shop like Jimmy John’s or Potbelly!
Learn More: Mrs. Merry
32. Cut and Collage Salad
Crayola brings us this adorable DIY salad-making activity. Print out the bowl, lettuce, and other veggies, and give your kids some crayons to bring the paper to life. Then, they can create their own salad by gluing the toppings of their choice! Celebrate by making a class salad made from real ingredients!
Learn More: Free Kids Crafts
33. Veggie People
This hands-on activity actually encourages playing with food! Your kids will love creating veggie people from an array of baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, and broccoli. Not only does this craft offer tactile play, but it also familiarizes your little ones with healthy foods that they can snack on!
Learn More: She Knows
34. Lettuce Process Art
Your preschoolers will love this watercolor, gluey fun that results in lettuce leaf art! Start by instructing your little artists to make squiggly lines all over their paper with liquid glue. After letting it dry overnight, they can return to the craft and bring their lettuce to life with some green watercolor paint!
Learn More: Stay At Home Educator
35. Yummy Yogurt Parfaits
In this next hands-on activity, your preschoolers will have loads of fun making their own yogurt parfaits! Teach them about fruits and grains along the way as they adorn their yogurt with healthy toppings. Watch them make a variety of parfaits and then have them vote on their favorite.
Learn More: All About Learning Press
36. Grape Structures
Grape structures are a hands-on activity that builds fine motor skills and introduces your preschoolers to the world of STEM. All you’ll need is a box of toothpicks and different kinds of grapes to teach them about variety! Let them experiment with building a strong structure while munching on some grapes along the way!
Learn More: Meghan Makes Do
37. Exploring Grains
This is a perfect sensory activity that exposes your kiddies to a very important food group – grains! Teach them about different grains by having them rummage their little fingers in tubs of corn and oatmeal for tactile play, or have them sort the grains into size, texture, and color groups for a challenge. Go grains!
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38. Rainbow Veggie Pizza
Sometimes it’s tricky to get preschoolers to eat their vegetables, so let’s entice them with pizza! Have your little chefs top off the dough, sauce, and cheese with a rainbow of different veggies. This is great for practicing their fine motor skills and sorting colors. The result is a healthy and tasty class snack that’s ready to share!
Learn More: The Gingered Whisk
39. Coloring Pages and Placemats
These coloring sheets are perfect for teaching little ones about healthy eating and safe food handling. Both printable and virtual coloring options are available, which makes this an easy and fun activity for any afternoon! The questions are perfect for a class discussion about food safety!
Learn More: Fight Bac
40. MyPlate Relay Race
MyPlate Relay Race combines nutrition with a little competitive physical fun! Your preschoolers will work in teams and take turns racing to a bag of fake food to sort it into the food groups on their plates. Once done, they’ll clear their plate for the next teammate who is off and running!
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