Eatable Activities for Healthy Eating -If It Does Not Grow Say No
We love to eat healthy in our house and I’m really lucky that I have two little ones that love a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. Our kids see Ryan and I eat healthy and that makes them more excited to do the same. I’ll share more about how we encourage this another day.
Today though, I’m sharing about a new activity book! When I learned about this new book called “If It Does Not Grow Say No” by Kerry Allison Wekelo, I was excited to check it out. It’s an Eatable Activities book for kids. It makes eating healthy interactive and fun.
There are a variety of activities to do throughout the book, as well as, prompts throughout the book to encourage you to have conversations with your children. Throughout the book the kids learn about healthy eating habits, natural sugars and processed sugars, and how good, natural foods fuel our bodies best.
I love the range of activity types throughout the book. There are pages that help identify items that the kids think they do like already, color association pages and there are a lot of prompted and fun activities that encourage you kids to try new foods. For example, the activity that encourages them to draw circles around what they do like is excellent for identifying what we should try more of, what they don’t remember trying, or that maybe that they do love and you didn’t realize. 
Throughout the entire book there are a lot of facts about fruits and vegetables, as well. The book appeals to kids because they are fun activities that they are included in, and while they are learning they are also learning fun facts. Some of the items are a little bit advanced for my little ones but the principals are so versatile they can be used for any age, really.
We did some fruit tasting with our little ones. I got up early and prepared a plate of fun fruits and arranged them into a color rainbow. I put familiar flavors alongside some new flavors they haven’t eaten a lot because they are justn ow in season. After the kids woke up we tried them all with breakfast.
Each of my kids try new things in different ways and I know how they both eat best. B eats best when he can self feed either by his hands or his own fork. So each piece of fruit we tried, I put it on his fork and let him take his time eating them. For A, she does best when she tries things on her own terms, so I let her explore the plate and try everything. While they ate, I ate some too because when I’m eating something they are more inclined to eat those same things or at least try them.
B loves cantaloupe and honeydew but isn’t a huge fan of strawberries or pineapple. He also loved all of the others on the plate which wasn’t a surprise. A wasn’t a big fan of the cantaloupe or the pineapple, but she loved everything else on the plate including a new fruit – honeydew. I wasn’t very surprised about the pineapple not being a favorite because of the texture.
After we tried some new fruit we went through and did the color association activity that encourages them to name the fruits and vegetables by color. We used the help of our plate of fruits, as well as, the seasonal fruits listed at the bottom which encouraged A to recall other items from memory that we have eaten in the past or seen at the store. It was so fun to see how many she remembered!
Today I’m giving away one copy of “If It Does Not Grow Say No!” Eatable Activities for Kids book by Kerry Alison Wekelo. Just for entering the giveaway we are going to automatically send you the Teaching Guide for the book so you can print it out and get hands on with your kids.
*Giveaway runs from 7/20/16 through 7/31/16. By submitting your information you are giving permission to both joyfullysmitten.com and the author Kerry Wekelo to contact you in the future. No purchase necessary to win this giveaway. US entrants only. Entrants must be 13 years old (with parental consent) or older.
[Tweet “I want to win @kerrywekelo’s new book to encourage by kids to eat the healthiest foods!”]
The website for If It Does Not Grow Say No is filled with information and free printables. I highly recommend you going and checking it out. I love the resources that Kerry is giving her readers and really feel like it’s a great representation of how invested she is in getting these resources out to families.
Are your kids healthy eaters or do they need some extra encouragement? You can purchase If It Does Not Grow Say No on Amazon for your little ones! Find excellent activities on the If It Does Not Grow Say No Website!
Disclaimer: The books in today’s post are courtesy of the author, Kerry Alison Wekelo. All opinions and imagery belong to JoyfullySmitten.com. Today’s post has amazon affiliate links. As always, the price doesn’t change for you, we could simply receive a small compensation and we thank you for supporting our blog and family.
