Getting Excited About Vegetables: STEM Activities

11. Apr
Activities

Getting excited about vegetables: STEM Activities

Eating unhealthy foods can have a negative impact on your brain as well as lead to problems such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

We know that a healthy diet is important for overall health. But what you may not know is that a balanced diet is essential for cognitive function, memory and focus.

And, a healthy diet includes lots of vegetables.

Vegetables are especially important for kids, because they help them grow and develop properly, and help them stay focused in school and energised throughout the day.

There are a few things you can do to help your kids eat a balanced diet:

  1. Plan ahead and make sure you have healthy snacks available.
  2. Teach them about the importance of a balanced diet and why they should avoid processed foods.
  3. Lead by example and eat a balanced diet yourself.

But winning over your kids with the prospect of eating vegetables can sometimes be a hard sell.

To help you succeed, we’ve found a collection of fun STEM activities for primary school-aged children which are designed to teach kids about healthy eating and have fun with vegetables.

Activities to do at home

The team at Primary + STEM have identified a collection of activities called ‘Engaging with Food’ to help children learn about vegetables and healthy eating.

The activity was curated by the Healthy Eating Advisory Service and can be found here: https://heas.health.vic.gov.au/

The activity forms part of the Primary + STEM team’s curated selection of Teaching Resources which have been mapped to the Victorian education curriculum. You can find over a hundred STEM activities on the Primary + STEM website.

Example activities

On the activity website, you’ll find lots of ideas for games and activities to teach kids about vegetables. Here are some of our favourites.

The veggie guessing game: Bring some magic to vegetables by placing them in a pillow slip and asking your kids to reach in and try to identify the vegetable by only using their hands.

Choose a letter of the week: Each day of the week, try to identify a vegetable starting with the same letter. For example, Monday is for Mushroom, Tuesday is for Turnip …

Create a person using vegetables: For this one, you’ll need some toothpicks, and several vegetables cut into slices. Kids can craft the vegetables into a person, an animal, or whatever takes their fancy.

Sing a song: Get kids interested in food through song. Recommendations from the website include:

[Warning – these songs may get stuck in your head for days! You’ve been warned :)]

For a full list of activities, visit the Healthy Eating Advisory Service website.

Information for teachers

In the activity ‘Engaging with Food‘, your students will learn about healthy eating through the use of games (e.g. The veggie guessing bag) and other hands-on activities, such as ‘Create a vegetable person’ and ‘Salty potato experiment’. The ideas presented via this resource can be used to engage children in healthy eating experiences while teaching them to recognise different foods and encourage them to experiment with new foods, tastes, flavours and textures.

This activity has been mapped to the Victorian curriculum:

  • Learning area: F-10: Design and Technologies
  • Curriculum code: Design & Technologies > Levels F to 2 > Food specialisations > VCDSTC016
  • Grade level: Foundation, 1, and 2

Image credit

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko