Teaching Healthy Eating in Elementary School: Food Group Lessons and Activities

Teaching healthy eating in elementary school is an important part of the health curriculum, but it can be tricky to keep students engaged. That’s why I created the Health Heroes—a hands-on, relatable way to make nutrition fun and memorable for young learners. In this post, I’ll share how I use the Health Heroes resource to introduce food groups, promote healthy choices, and bring my healthy eating unit to life in the primary grades.

Printable resources and activities to teach a healthy eating unit for Grade 1 - 3 with the Health Heroes

Meet the Health Heroes: A Fun Way to Teach Healthy Eating in Elementary School

The Health Heroes are superheroes who will help you engage your students as they learn to maintain a healthy body and eat well. We start out by talking about ways we can be a Health Hero. My students have lots of ideas—some that are true and some that are not. Starting a new unit with a conversation to assess prior knowledge is the best way to determine where the learning should begin.

Student completing a worksheet about ways to stay healthy during a Health Heroes lesson

Picture Books for Teaching Healthy Eating and Nutrition

Picture books are one of my favourite tools for teaching healthy eating in elementary school. They’re engaging, relatable, and make complex nutrition concepts easier to understand. I love to use them to launch most units and lessons. This is a collection of some of the titles I have used. Our school has a series of books about food groups that are very helpful. The Grains book in the image is an example of the kind of non-fiction book I am talking about. If you can't find them, a quick YouTube search will reveal that most, if not all, are available online.

Picture books used to teach healthy eating and food groups in the elementary classroom

I especially love Gregory, the Terrible Eater and The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food. They are fun books, and the kids can really relate to them.

Videos to Support Healthy Eating Lessons in the Classroom

There are several videos that I have used as part of my healthy eating unit that are great to check out as well. These videos are a great supplement when teaching healthy eating to elementary students and reinforcing food group vocabulary. This first one is part of a series created by the Eat Happy Project. There are videos for all of the food groups.

Crash Course Kids is another great resource for all things Science and Health.

Healthy Eating Activities for Kids: Food Group Sorting and More

After our conversation about what it means to be healthy, we moved to foods and tried some sorting. The students sorted the play foods and food cards in many different ways: when during the day you eat the food, where the food comes from, and by food colour. With prompts, they began to see the food groups.

Students playing a food group sorting game with Health Heroes cards during a healthy eating lesson

We used the food cards included in the Health Heroes resource to play many different games. The one pictured is Mingle. Students had to find others with food in the same food group. They sat together when they had 4 cards from the same food group. One of my favourite parts of teaching healthy eating in elementary school is seeing students get hands-on with food sorting activities. These lessons bring abstract nutrition concepts to life.

We also did a lot of independent practice to better understand ways to be healthy, the food groups, and the foods in each group. We sorted food, learned about sometimes foods, and created our food group posters. In true first-grade fashion, one of the daily highlights was to see if the activity page had a boy or a girl health hero.

A collection of food group posters, worksheets, and sorting activities from the Health Heroes resource

Food Group Games and a Culminating Project with Rubric

Before our culminating activity for the unit, I wanted to see if the students could put into practice what we had learned about the food groups and sometimes foods. We gathered on the carpet and sorted my lunch into the food groups foods and sometimes foods. Next, they went to their own space and sorted their own lunch. It's an eye-opening experience to have them actually look at what's in their lunch and compare it to what they have learned.

Student sorting their lunch into food groups as part of a culminating healthy eating project

To wrap up the unit, my students picked a meal they wanted to plan and then used grocery store flyers to find the food and show their meals. I also included pictures of food in the resource for them to use. I assessed their finished product using the rubric I created for the unit. This culminating project helps wrap up our unit on healthy eating in elementary school with a real-life connection that students love.

Aligned with Canada's Food Guide and MyPlate Standards

If you're teaching healthy eating in elementary school and looking for a low-prep, high-engagement solution, the Health Heroes resource includes everything you need if you teach 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade.