Paint Your Plate
WITH VEGETABLES AND FRUIT
Getting Started
By learning to love veggies and fruit at a young age, kids will learn a life-long habit that can help lower their risk of developing heart disease, high blood pressure and some cancers later in life. To earn this badge, find ways to promote, highlight and/or serve vegetables and fruit at school, and help students, teachers, parents and others paint their plates with yummy, veggies and fruit every day!
Steps To Earn This Badge
Step 1 - Ask the Students
Ask students how to encourage their friends, family and teachers to eat more vegetables and fruit. What kinds of activities could they run at school?
Step 2 - Start a Conversation
Talk to others about how great it would be to have more vegetables and fruit at school using the Helpful Links and Tools for this badge. Could more vegetables and fruit be included with catered lunches, celebrations and events? Is anything standing in the way of this?
Step 3 - Do a Nutrition Checkup
Vegetables and fruit are amazing! They pack a lot of nutrition, taste, and interest to meals and snacks and can be easy to prepare and very affordable. Help show everyone at school how easy it is to incorporate fruits and veggies into every meal.
Step 4 - Make it Fun
Now that you have taken steps to help students, teachers, parents or others paint their plates with yummy, veggies and fruit, it’s time to have some fun! Choose at least one of the activities below to get everyone excited, or come up with your own creative idea(s).
Badge Inspiration
- Innovative and inspirational ideas submitted from schools across the province!
- Sell tickets to guess how much a vegetable or fruit weighs (e.g. pumpkin for Halloween) or how many vegetables and fruit it takes to fill a specific basket. The winning guess gets the vegetables and fruit for their class or family to enjoy.
- Raffle off a spring basket. Skip the chocolate and offer a cookbook, a vegetable steamer and a gift certificate to a local produce store or farmers market.
- Run a smoothie bar and teach students how to make homemade smoothies to sell to the school community. Some schools have included spinach with their strawberry smoothie, making a nice green colour which was a hit with students.
- Register your elementary school for Freggie Friday – For more information visit: Freggie Tales
- Send home information on vegetables and fruit, such as a budget friendly tips and easy recipes
