Kids are the most difficult audience to work with, but they are also the most receptive. That’s because they are like a blank canvas. If you start early enough, you can mould them and empower them to make better choices – especially about their health in general and food habits in particular.
A live example of this is my son, who is now 2 years old. Right from the time I started him on solids, I exposed him to all kinds of fruits and vegetables. In fact, I only started adding salt to his meals after he turned 1 year old. And I still haven’t introduced him to sugar! He has never eaten a cookie, chocolate, ice-cream or even other packaged foods like chips, saltines or farsaan. And you know why it works? Because I regularly make special treats for him with natural ingredients that he enjoys and relishes, so he never feels deprived.
If you explore my blog, you will find many such recipes, but the ones he loves the most are his first birthday cake, his second birthday cake and his weekend breakfast of pancakes.
Thats exactly why, at the ‘Healthy Me’ workshop which was part of the kids summer camp at CLAP, I wanted to so something that would ‘excite’ the kids, something that brought a twinkle in their eyes and a smile to their faces, but also conveyed the message of good nutrition and healthy food choices.
So, at the beginning, we started off with an art-and-craft activity called ‘Make your own healthy plate’. Through the cutting and pasting kids learned about different food groups, which foods are a part of that food group and how much of each food group should be a part of their plate.
The next activity was a tag team race called ‘Is your food healthy or unhealthy?’ This one really got the kids all charged up. We divided them into teams. Each member of the team was given the name of a food on a card and this card had to be dropped into one of two bins viz. ‘HEALTHY’ or ‘UNHEALTHY’. The task was to run to the other end, deposit the card in the correct bin and run back to the team, after which the next member would repeat this procedure followed by the next until all the cards were deposited. The winning team would be the one that finished first but also got maximum cards into the correct bins.
The kids went into a frenzy with this one. Firstly, because they actually had permission to RUN! And secondly, because it made them work together in teams and really think about whether a food was healthy or not. They enjoyed it so much that we actually did this activity twice over! After the second time, all teams had put the cards in the correct bins so the team who finished first won 🙂
We ended the workshop with a cooking demo with hands-on participation by the kids. What did we make? Well, we made 3 very very yummy dishes and we’re posting the recipes for those dishes in separate posts. So stay tuned!
Choose Healthy, Be Happy 