Healthy Choices
Being at home together gives you the opportunity to explore healthy choices. These activities include things that will help your child develop fine and gross motor skills, problem-solving skills, and can help them engage in cooperative play, while fostering creativity and perseverance. Each theme also comes with recommended literature and video connections. Feel free to throw in your own activities that might relate, and don’t forget to post your results to social media and tag @discoverymuse to share with everyone else!
Healthy Choices Healthy Plate Art and Cooking Activity:
Can You Make a Healthy Eating Plate?
TRY THIS:
For this activity, you’ll need to get out old magazines, scissors, crayons, glue, and a paper plate!
Using pretend foods or pictures cut out from magazines, what kind of healthy plate can you make?
Be sure to include your fruits, vegetables, whole grains, healthy proteins, and healthy oils.
READ: Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRDynkCgAj4
The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EshHlD899Qc
WATCH: You Are What You Eat! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMRX_G-rNaY
VISIT the following to explore more healthy choice options:
https://www.choosemyplate.gov/browse-by-audience/view-all-audiences/children/kids
EXPLORE the following sites for kid-friendly healthy recipes:
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/photos/our-best-healthy-recipes-for-kids-and-families
https://www.yummytoddlerfood.com/recipes/dinner/healthy-family-meals/
BONUS: Now that you’ve made a pretend plate, can you work with your grown up to prepare a real healthy plate for your lunch or dinner?
Take a picture of your healthy plate when you are done. Post your pictures to @discoverymuse on social media.
Physical Activity
Movement Games:
Read Eric Carle’s From Head To Toe and act it out together.
Consider setting up an obstacle course using pillows and hula hoops and pool noodles and anything else you have in the garage. You can move through the course being a different animal (e.g. slither like a snake, hop like a rabbit, strut like a peacock, amble like a bear).
Move With Me is a goofy way to dance and exercise together.
For a low-tech way of moving together, consider a game of freeze dance! All you need is music and a way to pause it. Dance like crazy until the music stops! Take turns being the one to pick the song and the one to stop the music. Be sure to laugh a lot.
Kid-Friendly Yoga Stretches:
TRY THIS!
Can you fly like an airplane? Erupt like a volcano? Twist like a pretzel?
Stretch out on a yoga mat or a towel. Take a deep breath. How do you feel?
Pick one of the yoga poses to try. What shape are you trying to make? How does the pose look like the animal or thing it is supposed to be?
Try to make your body look like the picture. Can your grown-up do it too?
Take a deep breath. How do you feel now? Repeat the pose or draw a new card and start again.
Check out Cosmic Kids Yoga for younger children to get moving together.
For older children and adults, consider Yoga With Adriene.
Hop On Pop ABC Game
TRY THIS!
Read Hop on Pop together.
You will need index cards and markers for this one. Make ABC cards (write the upper and lower case version of each letter).
Spread the ABC cards out on the floor
Take turns calling out a letter to hop on!
o “Hop on Q!”
o “Hop on D!”
Can you think of an animal that starts with the letter you just hopped on?
Have fun together.
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