Food for Health

Spring Break Day 2: Food for Health

Resources: Local Museum, Local Market, Fresh for Kids, Super Healthy Kids, DLTK, Health Canada

W started the day with pancakes. My son Tyler loves pancakes, but we really think he is just in love with the syrup. We made a stack of whole wheat applesauce pancakes, and then talked about what could go on top, instead of syrup. I provided a few different toppings (yogurt, applesauce, sliced almonds, bananas, peanut butter), and let them choose. They were not sure at first...but Zach cut his up and dipped it in yogurt, while Tyler just didn't know what to do...he went for the fruit on the side and nothing on top. Little Luke is always cool with whatever I give him, as long as he can eat it.

After breakfast, we headed to the local museum which had an exhibit on food for health (hence the title of my day). On the way, we talked about red light food and green light food. Red light foods are things we should not eat, they make us stop. Green light foods are foods we can eat all the time, as much as we want, because they make us go. Yellow light foods are the things we can have once in a while, but use caution. They loved this game, so each of us took turns calling out a food, and the others had to say what colour it was. When we got to the museum, we had a quick snack before going in. We talked about whether fruit snack was red, yellow,or green. They decided it was yellow, because it was made from fruit, but it was super sticky. 

We toured the museum, travelling through time in a shopping cart, seeing ourselves as obese in a funny mirror, riding a bike to see how long it takes to burn off one potato chip, and other interactive displays.

Near the end, we did a scavenger hunt and as a prize each boy got a licorice candy stick...not a regular piece of licorice, but a hard piece of candy that they sucked on the whole way home...saying,

 "This is totally a red light food, but it tastes so good" 

On the way home, we stopped at the local market. Each boy got to choose 4 items that were green light foods. They each got their own basket, and I just let them decide what fruits and veggies they liked the best. I did not scold them on price, or tell them, "just one"..I let them go crazy filling their basket with good food.  

We went home and feasted on our green light food for lunch. Afterwards, the boys got really creative. They made Mr. Potato Head with real potatoes, carved faces into real potatoes, and made all sorts of neat scenes from leftover pieces and peelings, while we talked about composting.

During Luke's naptime, we did some soap carving. I wanted to make sure they knew some of the techinque, so we checked out YouTube videos on soap carving. It was fun to look together at the neat artwork some people have made. This gave them motivation to try, and I got out some carving tools and let them use their imagination to create a work of art.

We also printed off their own food pyramid chart. They got to pick the foods and activities they liked, and personalize the chart. We talked about the importance of all the categories, especially the fruit and veggie category, which is always the largest...which means we should eat the most from this category.
During quiet time, we read the story, There is a crocodile in our pickle jar, which gave us lots to talk about. We did a word search with the words, and while I did a spelling test with Zach, Tyler made his own chart of red and green light foods. We had pickles for a snack of course....and they helped me to plan dinner afterwards, by using their food guide.

Best lesson today....learned by mom...after teaching them all about healthy foods...during some screen time before dinner I gave them a red light snack...which made them all cranky and no one wanted to eat dinner. Opps!