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Now more than ever, it’s important for our students to be hearing information about nutrition and healthy eating habits as often as possible, including in their classrooms. As teachers, we all know how important repetition is for learning. The same is true when our primary students are learning about nutrition and healthy eating habits. It’s never too early to start getting your students excited about being healthy. While this may seem like one more thing to add to your plate, I assure you this amazing Let’s Eat Healthy program from the Dairy Council Of California will fit perfectly into your yearly curriculum and make it super easy for you. I am so excited to share this amazing resource with you and I know you and your students will love learning about nutrition and healthy eating habits with the Let’s Eat Healthy Program!
What is the Let’s Eat Healthy program?
The Let’s Eat Healthy program from the Dairy Council Of California is an absolutely FREE resource for California teachers! And, if you are not in California you can still get these resources at a very low cost! It was tested and approved by teachers and aligned with standards for grades kinder through second grade.
The Let’s Eat Healthy program Helps build the skills and knowledge to practice healthy behaviors with 5 fun and engaging lessons that include:
- Making Healthy Food Choices
- Drinking Better Beverages
- Understanding the Importance of Breakfast
- Learning About the Importance of Snacks
- Understanding Our Food System
With two to three activities in each lesson, teachers are able to choose which activities they want to do with their class.
How Do I Start?
The first thing you need to do is order your Let’s Eat Healthy Kit from the Dairy Council of California. The kit includes everything you need to teach these fun lessons including lesson plans, teaching posters, and student workbooks. They make it so easy to incorporate these important lessons into your day.
The Let’s Eat Healthy program comes with a super handy Nutrition Workbook for your students to use with each lesson. This workbook also includes a letter to families explaining the benefits of the program and what their students will be learning. This is great so that parents can reinforce the healthy eating concepts at home too!
Teaching About Food Groups
I love starting new learning with a fun activity to “hook” my students and really get them excited about the new topic or skill we will be learning. One year, I brought in a lunch bag stuffed with highly processed food. When my students were finishing up their morning work, I pretended to need something from my lunch bag. I pulled out candy bars, chips of all kinds, cookies, candy, and a soda. It was so cute to see when students started to notice all of the highly processed food I was taking out of my lunch bag. There were whispers and real looks of concern. I pretend to be shocked at their reaction and ask what’s wrong. Inevitably I have one or two students who are genuinely concerned about my health say “That’s a lot of unhealthy food!”.
Now, it’s time for me to get them involved! I ask them, “hum… Well, can you tell me what kind of food I should be eating then?” and walk over to our Let’s Eat Healthy Anchor Chart. By using the provided images of different foods, my students are able to sort the food into healthy and unhealthy choices, and voila! We are ready to jump right into our learning.
Creating a Healthy Plate
Now that we have our foods classified into healthy and unhealthy categories, it’s time to show students how much of each food they should have in a meal.
The USDA’s My Plate icon is the perfect visual representation of how much of each particular food group students should aim to include on their plate with each meal. My students love using the characters included with the Let’s Eat Healthy program to help them remember the different categories.
The characters include:
- Dairy- Mary Dairy
- Vegetables- Reggie Veggie
- Fruits- Farrah Fruit
- Grains- Jane Grain
- Protein- Dean Protein
Each of the food groups and characters helps to remind students what types of food they should be eating and how they will benefit their bodies.
Mindful Eating And Discovering New Foods
Once my students understand the important food groups and their usefulness to our bodies, it’s time to talk about mindful eating. Mindful eating helps my students become familiar with being able to recognize when they are hungry and when they are full. It’s also important for students to try some new healthy food they may be unfamiliar with.
This means it’s time for a fun snack activity. My students LOVE this activity because they get to snack on some really delicious and healthy food! I use the food groups poster and student workbook pages to help me plan out 5 food samples for my students to try.
Food samples include:
- Dairy- plain yogurt, kefir (yogurt drink), or cottage cheese
- Vegetables- Whatever vegetables are in season like bell peppers, cucumbers, baby carrots etc.
- Fruits in season- fruits that are in season like kiwi, blueberries, or mango
- Grains- loaf of whole-grain bread cut into chunks or whole-grain crackers
- Protein- deli meat, hummus, or sunflower seeds
I make sure my students sample each of the food choices by having them use the list in their workbook to write down or make a quick sketch of the food they tried. They will group them by coloring them with the appropriate colors representing each of the food groups.
My students really love this interactive activity. They also get really excited to find out that they actually like some of the new and nutritious food they tried.
Find My Food Group
After doing a quick think, pair, share activity about healthy food choices, it’s time for a fun game. Students work together to classify foods into the correct groups using the Let’s Eat Healthy posters. My students love working together in small groups to play this game.
Using the food pictures and characters, my students work together to place the correct food on the food group poster. It’s a great interactive activity they love, and it’s the perfect way for me to do an informal assessment of their learning so far.
Involving The Family
I absolutely love any opportunity to get families involved in the learning their kids are doing at school. The Let’s Eat Healthy program involves families by providing pages from the workbook for students to take home.
I love to challenge my students to keep a journal to write down all of the foods they eat at home during the week. It’s amazing to see the change in their food choices. Parents will thank you too when their kids are more willing to try some new fruits and vegetables with dinner. A student created journal can be as easy as printing pages with pictures of different healthy foods for them to color in as they are eaten. If you are doing this with 1st or 2nd grade you can ask students to write the name of the food with help from parents.
Let’s Eat Healthy All Year
The Let’s Eat Healthy program features 5 lessons focused on teaching your students the importance of a healthy and balanced diet. With so many lessons, it’s possible to spread them out throughout the year in the way that works best for you and your students.
Because this program aligns with so many state standards, it’s easy to incorporate into your lesson plans throughout the school year. You and your students will love the fun and interactive activities included in the Let’s Eat Healthy Nutrition Workbooks.
Save These Let’s Eat Healthy program ideas!
Be sure to save this page to your favorite Pinterest classroom board. Then you can come back for more ideas on teaching healthy eating and nutrition with the Let’s Eat Healthy Program by the Dairy Council of California.
