Healthy Children’s Activities

As a child care and early education provider, you play an important role in children’s lives, especially when it comes to food, physical activity and healthy lifestyle choices. Several learning resources and healthy children’s activities can combine nutrition with physical activity.

Children can learn about “go, slow, whoa” foods to learn healthy eating habits while playing a variation of “Red Light, Green Light.”

Physical Activities and Healthy Snacks for Young Children (Iowa Department of Education): A set of cards featuring over 50 physical activities and healthy snacks. It also integrates lessons about physical activity and healthy food.

Making healthy changes in your early education or family child care program can seem daunting, but with some planning and creativity it will pay off. Expand your children’s knowledge of nutrition, give them more opportunities to be active and teach them the skills to make healthy habits last a lifetime.


 Comprehensive Resource:

healthy classroom activities for preschool: KidsHealth and Sesame Workshop Healthy Habits for Life Resource Kit

KidsHealth and Nemours share our commitment to helping young children establish healthy habits. They combined expertise with Sesame Workshop to produce the Healthy Habits for Life Resource Kit.

The kit is a great resource that helps you incorporate healthy physical activity and nutrition habits into your everyday activities. This 100-page guide — available in both English and Spanish — has three sections: Get Moving, Food & Drink to Grow On, and Every Day Is a Healthy Day. Each section contains group poems and songs, posters, activities and family newsletters. The familiar Sesame Street characters will help you achieve your goals by keeping your students’ interest and attention as they learn.