Over the past few weeks our class has been learning a unit on Nutrition. A teacher from UMass (Ms. Nicole) comes in once a week for about a half hour to talk to us about eating healthy. Since we are learning about the food groups, I decided that it would be a fun activity to sample many foods in two of the groups, the fruit and vegetable groups. Today our class had a vegetable party. Ten vegetables were available for kids to try (cucumbers, carrots, string beans, spinach, red peppers, green peppers, celery, broccoli, tomato and corn).
Right before our party, we read a book about a little girl named Lola who thought she didn't like any vegetables and some other healthy foods. At the beginning of the story, she made it very clear to her brother that she would not eat any of these foods. Her brother, Charlie, was very clever and creative in his approach to get her to eat different healthy foods. He renamed many of them and told stories about where the foods came from. For example, carrots were not really carrots, but rather orange twiglets from the planet Jupiter. Mashed potatoes were not potatoes at all but rather cloud fluff from the sky. With each story he told convinced his sister to try the foods and guess what??? She ended up liking them.
This book led into a quick discussion about how everyone should be like Lola and try all of the vegetables at the party. Even though they might be convinced they don't like something, they might be surprised and end up liking it. I also told them that as they get older their tastes change and what they might not have liked as a younger child, they might like now. I was really pleased that almost everyone of the children ended up trying all 10 of the vegetables. Not all of them liked all of the vegetables but I was pleased they tried them.
During the party, the children sampled each vegetable and needed to record whether they liked it, did not like it or did not try it. At the end, they totaled up each column and made note of how many vegetables they liked or not. They wrote which one was their favorite and which one was their least favorite. I was surprised at the variety of vegetables that were chosen as the favorites.
