If you teach a kid to eat what’s on their plate, you teach them good manners and not to waste food. If you teach them to understand what their body needs to eat, you’re giving them a skill that will help them remain healthy throughout their lives. Whether you’ve got toddlers or teenagers, the web has a wealth of reliable resources to help you guide your kids towards an understanding of nutrition that meets their developmental needs.
Preschool
Early Childhood News Keecha Harris, RD, LD offers some ideas for helping preschoolers learn to appreciate fruits and veggies on multiple levels.
Color Me Healthy Overall wellness is more than just eating well–it’s moving well too! On top of recipes, meal planning resources and preschool-friendly activities, this site includes ideas for singing, dancing and moving with preschoolers.
Elementary School
CDC’s BAM! Nutrition and movement are covered with interactive tools in this fantastic site, but BAM! expands on wellness knowledge by talking about the immune system, bullying and hydration (to name a few) by creating a comic book universe where antibodies are superheroes and germs are villains.
Nourish Interactive This site provides parent and child versions of resources such as a meal planner and nutrition dictionary so you and your child can
Virtual Farm Tours Several tours are available, with appropriateness for differing ages from 4 through high school. Teach your kids about where their food comes from.
Nutrition.gov Kids’ Corner The kids’ section of the Nutrition.gov site offers games and activities to engage kids in thinking about and understanding nutrition and wellness.
Middle and High School
Nutrition.gov The tween and teen section of the Nutrition.gov site expands on the core lessons of nutrition to help teens think about ideas like body image and the changes bodies go through in adolescence.
Teen Nutrition: Helping Teens Make Healthy Food Choices This article from the Dairy Council of California offers some pointers on talking to your teens about taking charge of their nutrition to enjoy a healthy life .
A Delicious Twist on Teaching Nutrition to Teens Hands-on learning is great for teaching nutrition at any age, and teenagers especially benefit from projects like learning to cook with the help of a pro chef. This article describes a school effort that might inspire your community.