So the Olympics have started in London! Hooray, we are full of pride for our Great British athletes! Hopefully it will be a great way of persuading the great British public to become healthier. As much fun as we have performing “Meal or No Meal”, our healthy eating drama workshops in primary schools we know they have a serious message behind it.
Recent statistics from a large-scale survey in the UK show that as many as 25 percent of boys and 33 percent of girls aged between two and 19 years are overweight or obese. Unsurprisingly, most health experts agree one of the most important factors in the fight against childhood obesity is to encourage healthy eating habits from an early age.
Here’s a great game you can use with your class to teach them all about Healthy Eating.
Which Food Goes Where? (Suitable for Years 1 – 4)
Make up 5 food category signs
- Bread, other cereals and potatoes
- Fruit and Vegetables
- Milk and Dairy Foods
- Meat, Fish, beans, nuts and tofu.
- Fats and Sugars
Make some laminated pictures of food. Make two of each picture. You can either get the pictures off the internet or get the class to help you with drawing the pictures of the food. Here are some suggestions:
Apple x 2 (Fruit and Veg), Carrot x 2 (Fruit and veg), Bottle of Milk x 2 (Milk and Dairy), Tin of Tuna x 2 (Meat and Fish), Sausage x 2 (Meat and Fish), Nuts x2 (Meat and Fish), Slice of Bread x 2 (Bread, Cereals and potatoes), Oven chips x 2 (Bread, cereals and potatoes), Chocolate bar x 2 (Fats and sugar), Bottle of oil x 2 (Fats and sugar)
This game needs lots of space so use the hall!
- Make sure that you have two pictures of each of the foods. Split them into two separate piles so that each group has the same pictures. If you want to make it so they are competing put different coloured stickers on the pictures, e.g. red for one team and green for the other.
- Get five chairs or use a blank wall.
- Stick the 5 food category signs either on the back of 5 chairs or on a blank wall. Spread them out.
- Split the class into two teams and sit them on mats facing the chairs/wall.
- Get three volunteers from each team up to the front of the mats. Volunteer 1 from each team will be in charge of holding up the pictures of the food. Volunteers 2/3 from each team will run to put the food with the right sign.
- Tell the teams that the volunteer holding the food pictures will hold them up one picture at a time. Each team has to decide under which food category they go.
- Once they have decided (majority rules!) volunteer 2 will run and put the food picture under the food category sign (Either on the chair, or sticking it to the blank wall) they think it goes with. Once volunteer 2 returns the next picture is held up and volunteer 3 runs to put it under the right category and so on.
- Say that you will give the children one minute to complete the game, just to make them go quicker – this makes it more exciting for them – it’s up to you whether you actually time them or not!
- Play the game!
- When they have finished you can look to see if all the foods are in the right category. This can lead to explaining how each food group helps our bodies and how to be especially healthy we should have a balance of all the foods every day, saving the fats and sugars as a special treat.
- To make the game more difficult or last longer, you can add more food or more unusual or difficult to categorise food, vegetables like butternut squash, avocadoes, lentils, tofu, crisps or a bowl of cereal.
We hope you and your pupils enjoy this game and find it useful to start introducing your class to healthy eating. If would like to know more creative ways to teach your children about healthy eating, or if you would like to book a day of healthy eating drama workshops, do get in touch using the quick enquiry form to the right and we’ll be happy to help.
