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.

Wednesday 17th June 2026

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 & invitations that truly resonate with young minds, making learning about health, food, and the environment wonderfully fun!

Why Is Learning About Healthy Eating Valuable 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 Eat Your Veg Day by exploring the colourful world of vegetables through play, discovery, sensory experiences and healthy eating conversations. These planning ideas, provision enhancements and learning opportunities encourage children to develop positive relationships with food while learning where vegetables come from and why they help keep our bodies healthy.

Many of these early years and year 1 activities can be supported by our dedicated ‘Food’, ‘Gardening’ and ‘The Human Body’ resources.

Here's some inspiration for celebrating Eat Your Veg Day in your setting. The following ideas may be adapted for various EYFS and KS1 settings. In EYFS, these ideas are best viewed as invitations to explore and enhancements to provision rather than activities every child is expected to complete. Practitioners may choose to follow children's interests and experiences around food, cooking, gardening and healthy lifestyles, using these resources flexibly. In KS1, some ideas may also be used within more structured teaching sequences where appropriate. Printable resources to support the following ideas may be found further down this page.

(Please use your own discretion and knowledge of your children to ensure appropriateness of each activity or enhancement and safety concerning any materials given and activity undertaken. Promote positive attitudes towards food and avoid pressuring children to taste unfamiliar foods. The focus should be on exploration, curiosity and enjoyment.)

🥕 Exploring Vegetables with All Our Senses

Eat Your Veg Day provides an excellent opportunity for children to investigate vegetables through sight, touch, smell and taste.

Children might:

• Explore a variety of vegetables.

• Compare colours, shapes and textures.

• Describe what they notice using new vocabulary.

• Talk about their likes, dislikes and preferences.

• Discover that vegetables can look, smell and feel very different from one another.

Resources on our ‘Food’ page such as our free Fruit & Vegetables – Vegetable Posters, Fruit & Vegetables A4 Posters/Cards, Fruit & Vegetable Loose Part Mats, and Fruit & Vegetable Pom Pom Mats can help support these explorations.

Additional Provision Enhancements

• Create a vegetable investigation table.

• Provide magnifying glasses for close observation.

• Offer vegetable printing with cut vegetables and paint.

• Compare smooth, rough, bumpy and crunchy textures.

• Create transient art using vegetable shapes and colours.

• Encourage children to sketch or paint vegetables they observe.

🌱 From Garden to Plate

Children are often fascinated to discover where food comes from.

Children might:

• Learn that vegetables grow in soil.

• Explore seeds, roots, stems and leaves.

• Observe vegetables growing over time.

• Talk about how food reaches shops and homes.

• Develop an appreciation for growing and caring for plants.

Resources such as the Farm Shop and Garden Centre Role Play Packs and various gardening resources on our ‘Gardening’ page can help support these discussions.

Additional Provision Enhancements

• Plant quick-growing vegetables or herbs.

• Create a vegetable patch or container garden.

• Examine vegetables with roots still attached.

• Explore photographs showing how vegetables grow.

• Compare vegetables that grow above and below ground.

• Set up a farm shop or market stall role-play area.

🥗 Food Preparation & Healthy Choices

Preparing food can provide meaningful, real-life learning opportunities.

Children might:

• Help prepare simple vegetable snacks.

• Wash, peel or chop vegetables safely with supervision.

• Explore different ways vegetables can be eaten.

• Talk about healthy food choices.

• Develop confidence around trying unfamiliar foods.

Resources such as Healthy Eating Display Banners, Healthy Plate Posters, and Draw A Healthy Meal sheets on our ‘Food’ page, can help support these conversations.

Additional Provision Enhancements

• Create a healthy café role-play area.

• Make simple vegetable wraps, salads or soups.

• Sort foods into different categories.

• Explore foods of different colours.

• Discuss favourite healthy meals.

• Create healthy lunchbox designs.

🔢 Vegetable Maths & Problem Solving

Vegetables provide a wonderful context for mathematical exploration.

Children might:

• Count vegetables and compare quantities.

• Sort by size, colour or type.

• Create patterns using vegetables.

• Explore weighing and measuring.

• Sequence vegetables from smallest to largest.

Resources such as our Fruit & Vegetable 2-Piece Puzzles, Fruit & Vegetable Size Ordering Cards, Fruit & Vegetables Number & Counting Multimats, and Fruit & Vegetable Number Slice Puzzles on our ‘Food’ page, can support these investigations.

Additional Provision Enhancements

• Compare the weights of different vegetables.

• Estimate and count vegetables in baskets.

• Create repeating colour patterns.

• Sort vegetables by shape or size.

• Measure vegetables using cubes or non-standard units.

• Create vegetable tally charts and pictograms.

📚 Stories, Language & Communication

Vegetables can provide rich opportunities for storytelling and language development.

Children might:

• Learn new food-related vocabulary.

• Retell familiar stories featuring vegetables.

• Share experiences of meals and cooking.

• Discuss favourite foods.

• Develop descriptive language.

Stories such as The Enormous Turnip and The Little Red Hen provide excellent starting points for discussion and imaginative play.

Additional Provision Enhancements

• Create storytelling baskets linked to food themes.

• Retell stories using props and puppets.

• Invent new vegetable characters.

• Write shopping lists in role-play areas.

• Create menus for cafés and restaurants.

• Encourage children to describe tastes and textures.

❤️ Keeping Our Bodies Healthy

Eat Your Veg Day offers opportunities to discuss how food helps us grow, learn and stay healthy.

Children might:

• Learn that different foods help our bodies in different ways.

• Explore healthy lifestyle choices.

• Discuss how food gives us energy.

• Learn about balanced diets.

• Understand that everyone enjoys different foods.

Resources on our ‘Food’ page such as our Healthy Plate – Balanced Diet Posters, My Healthy Eating Diary Booklet, Fruit & Vegetable Diary, and resources from the Doctor Pack and Dentist Pack on our ‘Role Play Area’ page can support these discussions.

Additional Provision Enhancements

• Create a healthy living display.

• Explore foods that give us energy.

• Discuss foods children enjoy at home.

• Compare healthy snacks.

• Role-play visits to doctors or dentists.

• Create healthy eating posters.

🎨 Creative Vegetable Fun

Vegetables can inspire imaginative and creative learning opportunities.

Children might:

• Create vegetable artwork.

• Build vegetables using playdough.

• Design healthy meals.

• Create vegetable characters.

• Explore colour and pattern through food themes.

Resources such as our Carrot Create & Count Playdough Mats, Tomato Create & Count Playdough Mats, Fruit & Vegetable Colouring Sheets, and Fruit & Vegetable Loose Part Mats on our ‘Food’ page can support these experiences.

Additional Provision Enhancements

• Design fantasy vegetables.

• Create vegetable printing pictures.

• Make collages using food photographs.

• Build vegetable characters from loose parts.

• Create farmers' market displays.

• Produce vegetable-themed artwork for displays.

🔍 Explore More

To support your Eat Your Veg Day learning and encourage deeper exploration of healthy lifestyles and food education, you may wish to explore our resources linked to:

Food • Gardening • Stay Healthy • The Human Body

You may also enjoy exploring related themes such as:

Exercise • Handwashing & Hygiene • Teeth & Oral Health • Life Cycles • On the Farm

These ideas and provision enhancements offer meaningful ways to celebrate Eat Your Veg Day in EYFS and KS1 settings. By encouraging curiosity about vegetables, healthy eating and where food comes from, practitioners can help nurture positive food experiences, healthy habits and a lifelong appreciation of nutritious foods. 🥕🌱🍅🥗

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!

Search ‘Little Owls Resources’ Using the following Menu Buttons…

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/.