Craft activities built around fruits and vegetables may encourage kids to eat more of them.
Fruits and vegetables often contain lots of fiber, are low in calories and are a quick and healthy snack. Because of this, parents and teachers want to encourage kids to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. They may not be as appealing as sugary snacks, so art activities may encourage the kids to enjoy eating more fruits and vegetables.
Potato Head
Having kids make vegetable faces might encourage them to eat their vegetables on a regular basis. For this craft, you'll need to cut a potato shape out of brown construction paper. You can let the kids cut out various shapes for other things to decorate his face, such as eyes, a nose, a mouth and even a bow tie or hat. Students will then glue the "decorations" in place. If you want, you could use this craft to reinforce shapes. Just cut out one triangle for the nose and two for a bow tie, an oval for the mouth and black and white circles for the eyes. Direct students to place the items on the potato face by referring to the shapes.
You could also cut out the shapes for this craft using felt. That way, students would be able to use them on a flannel board. For more variety, consider cutting out other faces such as a tomato, cucumber, apple or orange, then cut out various shapes to decorate the face. Keep these in a bag and the kids can use them at the flannel board independently.
Fruit And Vegetable Basket
You can give kids a bowl full of good foods with this craft. On a large sheet of white construction paper, have students draw a simple basket, leaving room for fruits and vegetables. Cut several apples, potatoes and unripened bananas in half lengthwise (for the apple, just cut straight down the middle at the stem). Make sure your bananas are very unripe; otherwise, they may be too soft for students to handle. Students can use a toothpick to "carve" shapes into the apples and potatoes if they want. You can then pour some red, green (for apples), brown (potatoes) and yellow (bananas) paint into separate paper plates. Let students dip their fruits and vegetable into their appropriate paint colors then stamp them onto the paper in the basket to create a full basket of foods. They'll notice that the shape they carved with the toothpick will show up in the center of their fruit or vegetable.
Broccoli Buddy
This friendly-looking broccoli craft might entice kids to eat more green vegetables. You can provide kids with a piece of construction paper or card stock on which they can mount their buddy. Ahead of time, you can cut out several "stalks" (just the straight, firm part--not the florets) for the broccoli. Give each child a stalk, some green pompoms, googly eyes and various colors of construction paper so they can add facial features. The kids glue down the stalks, then glue the pompoms on the top to make the clusters of florets that form the head. Then they add the googly eyes and facial features to a couple of the pompoms. If they want, they could also give him arms and legs with construction paper.
Tags: construction paper, fruits vegetables, this craft, encourage kids, apples potatoes, could also, decorate face
