Eat Your Veggies! Books & Activities to Get Kids Interested in Healthy Eating

Spring will soon be here. The thought of all those fresh fruits and vegetables that will soon be in season has me resolved to get our family eating more of them. It will come as no surprise that our three year old's food preferences are the biggest challenge to meeting this goal!

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Strategies for Getting Your Child To Try More Vegetables 

Grow something (anything!) in your yard or windowsill 

Our three year old will eat grape tomatoes. Not just any grape tomatoes though. Only ones that come from our little backyard garden patch that he has picked straight from the bush and popped into his mouth. We had tried to introduce tomatoes many times at dinnertime, but he either wouldn't try them or spit them right back out. He loves helping Daddy with the garden though, and one day he just decided to try a tomato. You may be amazed at the things your child will be willing to try if they get to be part of the fascinating process of watching things grow. Curiosity is a powerful motivator.

Concerned that you don't have a green thumb? (I can identify!) Try one or more of these easy plants for kids to grow from seeds.

Just a couple of the 40 garden-inspired activities in Barefoot Books Kids' Garden activity deck.

You can also get your child more interested in how things grow through additional garden-inspired activities and crafts found in the activity deck Kids' Garden. 

Take your children to the farmers' market

Compared to the grocery store, the farmers' market is soooo much more bustling and fun for a kid! Farmers are generally more than happy to chat with you and your child about what different vegetables are and how they are grown. They may even have some kid-friendly meal ideas for you that incorporate their produce. Before heading to the farmers' market, tell your children you have an important job for them: you'd like them each to pick out one vegetable to try this week. Giving them choices can remove some of the resistance to eating their veggies.

Read books about where food comes from

Stories are a wonderful way to talk about the many different things that you can eat. Here are some of my favorite Barefoot Books tales that relate to gardens, farming, and food.

Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon (Ages 5 - 9)

Your child will love this book for its humor and adventurous plot, which focuses on how Herb can save himself when the king's men mistake him for a dragon who eats princesses and knights. You can also use the story to talk about many of the different vegetables Herb grows and how much he enjoys making them into delicious recipes. Perhaps your child will want to pick out one of Herb's veggies to try the next time you're at the grocery store or farmers' market.

Driving My Tractor (Ages 3 - 7)

This catchy sing-a-long takes you all around the farm as the farmer collects his cow, donkeys, pigs, sheep, and chickens. The bonus pages in the back of the book include drawings of the many kinds of vegetables that are grown on the farm.

Grandpa's Garden (Ages 3 - 8)

This story follows a young boy as he helps his father in the garden during every season of the year. This would be a great book to read outside next to your little garden patch! It's also chock-full of helpful bonus learning pages on tasks to keep your garden healthy in each season.

The Beeman (Ages 3 - 8)

Ok, so this one is not about vegetables, but it is about where (delicious!) food comes from. The gentle rhyming text teaches all about the different kinds of bees and how honey goes from hive to jar. It also includes a recipe for apple and honey muffins (yum!)

Let your child help you cook

You might be thinking "my child slows me down too much in the kitchen." I hear you. I can't say that I'm always overjoyed when our youngest asks if he can help while we're cooking. However, seeing how the dish is created, and experiencing the textures and smells of cooking can get kids curious enough to try something new. Not sure what tasks your child is ready to handle in the kitchen? This post from Thirty Handmade Days has a helpful kitchen skills by age infographic.

If you're looking for healthy recipes that are easy for kids to help with (or for older children to make on their own), you need Barefoot Books Kids' Kitchen recipe card deck.

Try different strategies at the table

You may have already discovered that people have very strong opinions about the best way to get children to eat healthily (in both the short-term and long-term). I only know what we've actually tried in our own home and how our two boys have reacted. With my stepson, I was truly appalled when my husband and I started dating and saw the things that this child was eating. He was being served a separate, highly processed meal with virtually no fruits or vegetables every night. After a few conversations (with a helpful nudge from my future mother-in-law), my husband decided to start making only one meal for all of us. If our then 9 year old didn't want to eat something, we wouldn't prepare anything else and he couldn't have dessert. There were definitely some uncomfortable meals, and occasional tears (shed by all of us), but after about 3 months he began eating at least a small serving of most things we served. Now 17, even though he still has a taste for junk food, my stepson eats a wide variety of foods, including many things I would not have eaten as a teen.

With our three year old, we watched with disappointment how he went from being a baby who would eat so many different things to a toddler who eliminated virtually every vegetable from his diet. So far, we have not been as consistent about requiring him to eat everything the other three of us are eating. Often times he does have to take a tiny serving of the vegetables if he wants to have a small dessert. We've found that he'll eat some vegetables (like broccoli) raw but not cooked, so his vegetable may be served in a different form than ours. Some nights he eats what he's served and some nights he chooses not too. He's very resistant to dishes that are mixed, such as soups and casseroles, so on nights where that is the main dish he may get something different. I have seen in the past year that he is willing to eat more healthy foods than he used to, though we still have a long way to go. 

At times when we're concerned about his nutrition, we'll add pureed broccoli to his mac n cheese, or make fruit and veggie popsicles that incorporate things he wouldn't otherwise eat.

What works best for your family to encourage healthy eating?