My Plate is a set of nutrition guidelines developed by the USDA. The goal is to encourage
healthy eating for kids by helping you and your kids create a balanced and nutritious plate of food each meal. Introduce My Plate to your kids through a fun pretend play activity.
My Plate
I’ve talked about
developing healthy eating habits in children before. Reading books and doing activities about eating healthy really makes an impact with kids. The USDA also has lots of great tips and suggestions for promoting healthy eating on their
Choose MyPlate website. They have health and nutrition information for preschoolers, children, adults, and even specific groups like college students.
For this pretend play activity, start by printing out a
MyPlate placemat from the USDA’s website. You have several different color combinations from which to choose. For durability, place contact paper over the placemat or laminate it.
Healthy Eating for Kids
Cut out different types of food from felt {or colored paper}. Choose a variety of foods including foods your kids eat and foods you wish your kids eat. Remember this is just pretend, so your food can be as similar to the real thing as you want. My son loves to pretend random pieces of cut up foam are different foods. It’s all about the imagination.
Talk to your child about the different food groups on the MyPlate placemat – fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy. The plate is a great visual to show the recommended amounts needed at each meal. Half of your plate should be vegetables and fruit. Do your kids eat enough? I know my son doesn’t usually. He tends to choose more grains.
Our pretend plate below has beans, rice, broccoli, strawberries, and milk.
After creating pretend balanced meals together, hopefully our kids will be more inclined to eat the balanced meals we put before them.
More Kids Activities
Have you heard of My Plate? How do you encourage healthy eating for kids? For more kids activities and healthy food ideas, take a look at these:
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I made a file folder game like this. I took the grocery store flyers from the Sunday paper and cut out some of the foods we eat and pasted them to half index cards. Then I attached a 1/4 envelope to each section of the plate I had drawn on the file folder as a pocket to put each food item in for the game. My little ones can ask me “are beans a protein or a grain?” And I can reply, “they are a protein, purple” and they can put the bean card in the correct pocket.