Encouraging Families to Learn About Food at Home
As an early years setting you provide lots of opportunities for children to learn about and explore different foods. You can support specific areas of learning, in-line with the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework (opens in new tab) . For example, their ‘Understanding of the world’, through activities, such as growing strawberries, teaching children where different foods come from or about growing cycles.
To further support children’s learning, encourage families to continue learn about food at home. Check out some of the idea below:
Drawing fruit and vegetables
Activity: Encourage families to draw a new fruit or vegetable and write down one interesting fact about the food. For example, families could draw a carrot and discuss how these vegetables grow in soil under ground.
Learning linked to EYFS:
- Physical development – Drawing fruits and vegetables is a chance for children to improve fine and gross motor skills
- Understand the world – learn where food comes from or how it grows
- Literacy- develop their literacy by describing what they have drawn
- Expressive arts and design- alert children to new shapes and colours.
Food detective activity in the local supermarket
Activity: Why not set the whole family a home learning activity around finding a healthy breakfast option in their local supermarket.Encourage families to use their detective skills to find a healthy breakfast swap. This may include swapping sugary cereal for porridge, plain shredded wheat, or plain wheat bisks cereals and topping them with their favourite fruit for their weekend breakfast. You could guide children and families during the activity by offering healthy breakfast swaps ideas.
Learning linked to EYFS:
- Physical development- walking to and from the shops, picking up foods and carrying them
- Personal, social and emotional development- swapping their sugary breakfast option for a new food, learning to overcome dislikes for certain foods.
Growing Activities
Activity: There are lots of things you can grow with children- from fruits and vegetables to herbs. A simple growing activity to start with is cress. Ask families to record when they water the cress and make notes on how it changes as it grows.
The only equipment required is something to plant the seeds in e.g. an empty milk container or yogurt. Cress is easily grown on a window ledge.
Take a look at our blog ‘Growing and Gardening Activities for Children’ (opens in new tab) for more ideas!
Learning linked to EYFS:
- Understand the world- teaches children about gardening and how to look after plants, life cycles and how plants grow.
- Communication and language- develops children’s language by encouraging them to record changes they see to plants.
Cooking at home
Activity: Consider sharing healthy, fun and creative recipes with families as part of home learning and challenge them to cook and eat together. Make sure you share recipes which are in-line with the Eat Better Start Better guidelines.
Take a look at our blog ‘Child-Friendly Recipes and Cooking Activities’ (opens in new tab) for lots of recipe ideas!
Learning linked to EYFS:
- Personal, social and emotional- teach children to learn to work with others and boost self esteem.
- Mathematics- counting out spoons of ingredients or learning to weight out ingredients.
Want to give your staff the knowledge and confidence to deliver cooking activities in your setting?
Book our Cooking and Learning about Food online training now!
