Nummy Nummy There's a Rainbow in My Tummy

Rainbow in my Tummy

Get Kids Eating Healthy  with a Customized Activity Magnet Set

Hi everyone, in case you missed my guest post over at Wanna Be Balaced recently, this is my most recent tutorial.  I am excited to share this fun and easy craft project I designed that will help your kids eat more fruits and veggies and can't wait to hear what you think! :)

Sometimes it’s hard to get our kids eating healthy, including a variety of fruits and veggies every day, but it is very important to get all 5 food color groups in there (7 colors total as yellow/orange and blue/ purple are put into the same groups).

To encourage my daughter, I get her pumped up about eating a particular fruit or veggie to help make a rainbow in her tummy.  And you know all rainbows are magic right? Well, when you eat lots of different colors of fruits and veggies, it makes a magic rainbow in your tummy that helps your hair grow long, makes you brain really smart, makes your eyes see super good and it makes your body really strong and fast!   One of our favorite ways to make an instant rainbow in our tummys together is to make  strawberry lemonade with our juicer.  It's one of her favorite things to make, the kids love putting the fruits and veggies in and seeing the juice come out! And both my kids chug it, I can barely get any!

Strawberry Lemonade

1 large carrot or 2 small carrots

between half to one cup blueberries

1 1/2 cup strawberries

1 banana

1/3 cucumber

1 lemon

Now to help the kids visualize and keep track of the rainbow in their tummy each day, I made a fun little character that can be customized to resemble your child.  Here is what you'll need to make the rainbow in my tummy activity chart.

templates (right click and save images and then print so each one is a full page)

large sheet of drawing paper, butcher paper

pencil, pen

pencil crayons

glue

scissors

scrapbook/colored paper (optional)

7 small round magnets (got mine at hobby lobby)

felt (red, yellow, orange, white, green, blue, purple)

glue gun

Click on image to open the template images in new window, right click and save to your computer.  Print each image full size on a sheet of paper.

 Pick a hairstyle for your boy or girl or make your own

Trim the top and bottoms of the template pages and line up the legs to the torso and secure with a piece of tape.

Place image under a larger piece of drawing paper or butcher paper and trace the whole image.

Cut out selected hairstyle and either color in with pencil crayons or markers, or do what I did and trace onto a sheet of cardstock that matches your child's hair color and then cut out.

Use the template to give your child's character either a skirt or shorts and again, either color it in, or trace it onto scrapbook/colored paper and then cut out.

Glue the hair and skirt/shorts onto the character.  I also cut out some shoes.

If you want, you can color in the eyes and the T-shirt....or your child can color them.

Cut out circles of felt about the size of a quarter, 2 of each color. (I traced the bottom of my jumbo glue stick).  With your glue gun, apply some hot glue to the flat surface of your magnet and then press it down in the center of one of the felt circles.  Then put hot glue all the way around the edges of the circle. Place the matching felt circle on top and then pinch the seams together.

You can see below how I cut out the character from the big sheet of paper and hung on the fridge.  Your child can now move the magnets around and start with an empty tummy each day, adding magnets as they eat various colors!  And like I said earlier, there are 7 colors but 5 groups so this is what to aim for

GREEN, RED, WHITE, YELLOW/ORANGE, BLUE/PURPLE...they don't have to actually eat something blue and purple everyday, since they are in the same color group.

To help your child (and yourself) get familiar with a variety of foods from each food color group, visit these fun links and activity pages at Rainbow Foods Activities and Coloring Pages  (scroll down till you see the thumbnails of the free printables)