HEALTHY PLATE ART LESSON: Hands-On Learning About Nutrition

Can I only teach art, please?

Well, I could if I got creative enough, right?

Getting creative and doing hands-on, fun activities is an important part of our homeschool experience. We all tend to learn better when we get to use our hands to create things about what we learn.

In this art lesson, mixing colors was the main focus. This also qualifies for a “health” lesson as well. I like to knock out two birds with one stone sometimes!

I love mixing colors to make any color I want!

I only buy primary colors (red, blue, yellow), plus white and black. That is all I use when I paint with acrylic, which also keeps costs down, instead of buying more than you will need.

A paint that is affordable and spreads easily can be purchased at Walmart or any craft store. This is my favorite:

First, we learned about mixing colors again (since we can forget easily).

RED + BLUE = PURPLE
BLUE + YELLOW = GREEN
RED + YELLOW = ORANGE
ORANGE + BLACK = BROWN

       Then I taught them about 3 main food groups that our bodies need for a good nutrition and what that means.

Our bodies are amazing, and will turn plants (fruits & veggies) into protein! Plants contain amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein. Our bodies take those amino acids and build protein for our bodies! Therefore, even if you are vegetarian, your body will make protein out of plants!

There are many opinions out there concerning what is healthy, so for this lesson, I mainly stick to teaching about whole foods in general. If we can eat as many foods in their whole food form, we are on a good path to nutrition.

The biggest section on our plate is veggies. Then the next two are proteins and fruit. I also taught that fruits are also considered carbohydrates (carbs). There are healthy and unhealthy carbs that most people can agree upon, so we learned about the unhealthy ones and added the healthy ones to our Healthy Plate.

As we talked about different foods, I asked them to come up with some ideas for me to draw on our dry-erase board onto the Healthy Plate.

Then we took paper plates, and drew lines on them with a permanent marker to separate the different food types. All we had were these colorful Dixie paper plates, but I would recommend something more plain and solid white.

Then, I asked them to come up with their own food items as we talked about the lesson. They began painting and had a good time while learning!

They wanted to continue painting different foods onto a separate sheet of paper when we were done, so they did! They each made another painting of their favorite meals. My oldest loves steak

I hope this inspires you to use art in your classroom or at home for fun!