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Some children tend to sit on the dinner table and play around with the food, making a mess over the entire table. Others might sit with a grumpy face once they see their plate filled with healthy vegetables. Reasoning with them about taking care of their health will barely make a difference since your kids would either want something tasty or delicious or simply be looking forward to engaging in an activity that isn’t as boring as eating food. This is where involving them in various food-related games comes in handy.
Why Play Food Games?
Given the fact that most of our daily meals are a combination of grains and vegetables and they have to be, your child might lose interest altogether in the concept of having a meal itself. But turning the same activity into a game can show them a different side they might be interested in.
1. Encouraging Healthy Eating
Cartoons like Popeye exist for a reason. Once kids start liking the character, they start observing his constant habit of eating spinach to build his muscles. By showing them what benefits they will reap once they start eating healthy vegetables, you will end up removing a major hurdle from their thought process and get them interested in your regular meals.
2. Recognising Different Foods
Having developed a comfort of sorts in the known, children can either be excited to see what else might be in store or would want to stick to these zones alone. Using food games, introducing new food preparations or items can make it easier for children to break their boundaries and be willing to give something new a try that is quite worthwhile.
3. Experimenting with New Tastes, Textures and Flavours
Our palate tends to develop over time, but it starts off with the strong flavours of sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and spicy. While these are instantly recognisable, there are varying degrees and combinations amongst these, and even a bunch of new ones, which can introduce your tongue to a whole new spectrum of tastes. Your children might not like them when part of a meal, but combine the same in a guessing game and your kids will turn into chef scientists, tinkering around with tastes and flavours to discover something new.
4. Engaging Kids for Hours in Healthy Eating Experiences
Nobody likes to be involved in an activity that feels like an unwanted duty or a hated job. Eating vegetables and healthy food seems like one of those for children as they grow up. But rather than have them spend hours playing video games or gorge on junk food to satiate their cravings, combining healthy food choices with a gamified experience is a better way to deal with them. This not only ensures that your children consume enough healthy items, but it also keeps them involved in the activity for a long time.
Fun Food Games for Children
We have put together a bunch of interesting food-related games that can be a great starting point for you and your children on the path to discovering more of those later on.
1. Hunting for the Treasure
One of the classic ways to get your kids to have healthy food is to allure them of stumbling across their favourite sweets.
What You Need
- A bowl
- Healthy cereal
- Marshmallows or other sweets
How to Play
Take a bowl and add few marshmallows or candies in it. Fill up the bowl with a cereal preparation to a quantity that’s usual for his appetite. Let him know that there are interesting items hidden under the cereal, but he needs to eat his way down to them. This will ensure he eats enough healthy food and gets the enjoyment of finding his favourite sweet as well.
2. Make Your Game and Eat It Up
If your child gets bored and starts playing around with his food, give him the delight of making a game out of food items.
What You Need
- Any board game
- A few tokens
- Various food items
How to Play
Use tokens on the game boards at various points, such as at the top of ladders in the snakes and ladders board, or use some fruits and vegetables themselves as items to play tic-tac-toe with. Each time your child progresses ahead in the game, he needs to eat up the game pieces to proceed ahead. The yearning to win will have him eat all the healthy food items with excitement.
3. Construction With Food
Imagine replacing Lego blocks with some healthy food items instead. That is pretty much what you do with this game.
What You Need
- Food items of various shapes
- Clean wooden sticks or barbeque rods
How to Play
Start off simple by asking your kid to build a tower out of the vegetables before him or another shape such as a pyramid or so. Let him know that any pieces that fall have to be eaten up. He can use sticks or rods to bunch certain items together to support his construction. Not only will this make him consume the items that will inevitably fall, but it teaches him the nuances of physics and geometry, which will be beneficial later on.
4. Yoghurt Painting
Get your kids to devour yoghurt while turning them into modern artists.
What You Need
- A clean plate
- Yoghurts of various flavours or mixed with food colours
How to Play
Put together some small bowls around a large plate and pour a different kind of yoghurt in each of them. Mix plain yoghurt with different food colours to give your child a colour palette. He can then use a food brush or a spoon to paint the plate the way he wants. Once he is done, allow him to go berserk and lick his painting off the plate.
5. Peanut Butter Play Dough
Why opt for the commercial play dough when yours can be eaten and be delicious, too?
What You Need
- Peanut butter
- Sugar
- Honey
How to Play
Mix all the ingredients to form a nice creamy dough with peanut butter. Let it stay for a while so that it gets malleable. Now, your kids can sit on the dining table and use the dough to make different shapes. Tell them to make some in the shape of cookies which you can bake later and have it as a snack.
6. Blindfold Guessing
Another variant of this can be done by closing the nose, which can be even more exciting.
What You Need
- A black cloth
- A clip
How to Play
Put together all the food items that you want your child to guess. Blindfold him and close his nose with a clip if you wish to make it harder. Hand them a fruit or a vegetable and let them guess what it is. Once they do, ask them to eat it and check if they were right. This is exciting as well as quite filling for your child’s stomach.
7. Food Necklace
Food items can be turned into jewellery as well, which can be worn or eaten up easily.
What You Need
- Cereal items
- A thick lace
- A blunt needle
How to Play
Thread the lace through the blunt needle and hand it to your child. Let him start stringing each cereal item together to create a nice necklace. He can wear it while he plays around and munches on the cereals intermittently. The thick lace prevents anything else from being eaten accidentally.
8. Home Gardening
This takes time to give its results, but your kid will have a lifelong habit that is purely wonderful.
What You Need
- A few seeds
- A garden plot
How to Play
Start by teaching your kid how to plant the seeds and water them appropriately. These could be fenugreek, coriander or any other simple to grow plants that are healthy. Let your child take care of the garden. Once they grow fully, ask him to pick them out and help you with making a meal out of them. Your child will want to taste it for himself and be bestowed with a sense of accomplishment and inculcate a level of patience.
A variety of food games for preschoolers and other kids play an important role in inculcating good eating habits and instilling various behavioural tendencies and good habits that are essential ahead in life. Over time, your kids get used to having healthy meals and will even help you out with cooking meals for the home.
These interesting food games for kids can help a child recognize different foods. He might even try new textures and flavours. Ask your child to hold different food items in his hands and taste them – this will refine his senses. However, to promote his overall development, invest in craft kits designed for kids. Being occupied with craft activities will improve your child’s imagination and help him unleash his creative side.
