Eat your Veg Day | EYFS & KS1 Activity Ideas

**Note: This page is for educational inspiration and is not officially affiliated with Eat your Veg Day. Eat your Veg Day is primarily observed in the USA with the aim of inspiring children and adults alike to eat more vegetables. The day is typically held in June a promoting the idea that vegetables are delicious, colourful, and essential for a strong body and a happy mind.

Understanding Eat your Veg Day in EYFS & KS1

Let's munch on some crunchy carrots and tasty tomatoes for Eat your Veg Day! 🥕🥦😋 This day reminds us that vegetables are like superheroes for our bodies—they are full of good things that help us run, jump, think, and grow big and strong. It's a day to try new vegetables, discover different colours and textures, and have lots of fun with food! By making vegetables a happy and enjoyable part of our day, we can learn to love them for life.

For early years settings, nurseries, preschools, childminders, and Year 1 and Year 2 classrooms, this day provides a wonderfully practical and crucial theme for exploring healthy eating, food and nutrition, the five senses, food origins, and understanding the world (the natural world). It’s about empowering children to make healthy choices for their bodies, encouraging them to be brave and try new things, and teaching them where food comes from. This day offers fantastic planning ideas and inspiration for engaging activities that truly resonate with young minds, making learning about health, food, and the environment both essential and wonderfully fun!

Why Is Learning About Healthy Eating Important for Young Children?

Integrating Eat your Veg Day and themes of healthy eating and nutrition into your practice with young children (aged 0-7) is great for fostering positive habits, developing a healthy relationship with food, and building a foundation for a healthy lifestyle.

• Fosters Healthy Habits: Encourages children to enjoy a wide variety of vegetables and make healthy food choices.

• Teaches Food Education: Helps children learn where their food comes from and how it grows, connecting food to the natural world.

• Develops Sensory Exploration: Provides opportunities for children to touch, smell, taste, and explore different vegetables, which can reduce fussiness.

• Builds a Positive Relationship with Food: Makes learning about vegetables a fun, non-pressured experience.

• Supports Physical & Mental Health: Teaches children that food gives them the energy to play and learn.

Engaging Vegetable & Healthy Eating Activities for Eat your Veg Day (EYFS & KS1)

Let's celebrate the amazing world of vegetables for Eat your Veg Day with these planning ideas and activities perfect for EYFS and KS1 children. The focus is on discovery, fun, and tasting! Many of these early years and year 1 activities can be supported by our dedicated ‘Food’, ‘Gardening’, and ‘Healthy Eating’ resources.

Here's some inspiration for celebrating Eat your Veg Day in your setting: (Please use your own discretion and knowledge of your children to ensure appropriateness of each activity and safety concerning any materials given and activity undertaken. Emphasise positive messages about trying new foods and being proud of making healthy choices.)

Exploring Vegetables with All Our Senses

• Vegetable Tasting Station: Set up a tasting station with a variety of raw and cooked vegetables. Encourage children to taste, describe the flavours (e.g., sweet, bitter, crunchy), and talk about the textures.

• Vegetable Posters & Cards: Use our 'Fruit & Vegetables - Vegetable Posters' and 'Fruit & Vegetables - A4 Posters/Cards' to identify and name different vegetables.

• Vegetable Art: Use halved vegetables like potatoes, carrots, or broccoli as stamps to create prints. This is a fun and creative way to explore the shapes and textures of vegetables without the pressure of eating them.

• Creative Learning: Use 'Fruit And Vegetable Loose Part Mats - Playdough, Loose Parts, Art & Craft' or 'Fruit & Vegetable Pom Pom Mats' to create vibrant vegetable pictures.

Hands-on Food Fun & Discovery

• Cooking with Vegetables: Get children involved in making a simple vegetable-based snack, like chopping vegetables for a salad, mixing ingredients for a vegetable soup, or making a colourful rainbow skewer.

• Farm Shop Role Play: Set up a 'Farm Shop Role-Play Pack' where children can pretend to buy and sell vegetables. This is a great way to link vegetables to their origins.

• Gardening Fun: Plant some vegetable seeds (e.g., cress, lettuce, radishes) in a small pot and watch them grow. This activity teaches children that vegetables come from the ground, not a supermarket!

• Learning through Playdough: Use our themed playdough mats like 'Carrot Create & Count Playdough Mats' and 'Tomato Create & Count Playdough Mats' for a sensory, hands-on activity.

Literacy & Numeracy with Vegetables

• Vegetable-themed Story Time: Read picture books that feature vegetables, such as 'The Enormous Turnip' or 'The Little Red Hen'. Discuss the vegetables mentioned in the stories.

• Sorting & Counting: Use our resources like 'Fruit & Vegetable 2-Piece Puzzles' and 'Fruit And Vegetable Size Ordering Cards' to develop sorting and sequencing skills. Use 'Fruit And Vegetables Number/Counting Multimats' for counting and number recognition.

• Counting Games: Put a variety of vegetables in a basket and get children to count them. You could also create simple number puzzles using our 'Fruit & Vegetable Number Slice Puzzles (1-5 & 1-10)'.

• Displaying Healthy Choices: Create a classroom display with our 'Healthy Eating - Display Banner' and 'Fruit & Vegetables - A4 Colouring Sheets'.

Connecting to the Body & Health

• Healthy Plate Discussion: Use our 'Healthy Plate - Balanced Diet Posters' and 'Draw A Healthy Meal' sheets to talk about a balanced diet and how vegetables fit into it.

• 'Food Diary' Activity: Use our 'Fruit & Vegetable Diary' or 'My Healthy Eating Diary Booklet' to encourage children to track the vegetables they eat, promoting self-awareness and positive habits.

• Body Health Role Play: Use resources from our 'Dentist Pack' and 'Doctor Pack' to talk about how doctors and dentists help us stay healthy and how food choices, like eating vegetables, contribute to that.

• Sugar Awareness: Use our posters like ''Don't Eat Too Much Sugar!' Poster' to highlight the importance of choosing healthy snacks like vegetables over sugary treats.

• Explore More: To explore our extensive catalogue of resources on these themes, please visit our ‘Food’, ‘Gardening’, ‘Stay Healthy’, and ‘The Human Body’ pages. You may also like to explore other relevant pages which cover connected themes such as ‘Exercise’, ‘Handwashing and Hygiene’, and ‘Teeth and Oral Health’.

These activities offer great inspiration for making Eat your Veg Day a memorable and impactful experience in your early years and Key Stage One setting, fostering healthy eating habits, food education, and a lifelong love for vegetables.

To explore ideas surrounding additional early years events, please visit our 'Special Dates Calendar' page.

Printable resources to support teaching & learning surrounding: ‘Eat your Veg Day’

Free EYFS & KS1 Fruit, Vegetable and Healthy Eating Printable Resources and Activities:

Additional EYFS & KS1 Healthy Eating Related Printable Resources, Packs and Activities:

Additional Pages you may like to explore which cover relevant &/or Connected themes

More Early Years Event Pages for June

Explore special dates (including awareness dates, festivals, celebrations & events) relevant to your EYFS & KS1 children

Browse our ‘Special Dates Calendar’ page using the link below. You’ll find calendars for every month of the year to aid your planning!

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Disclaimer:
This page is for educational purposes only and is intended to support early years and primary practitioners with ideas and resources related to 'Eat your Veg Day'. We are not officially affiliated with or endorsed by Veg Power, which organises this annual initiative. We do not claim any rights to specific trademarks or official materials associated with this event. For official information and details, please visit the Veg Power website: www.vegpower.org.uk/.