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Smile! With Fresh Fruits & Veggies

Eating fruits and veggies is a healthy, green choice! These freggies (fruits and vegetables) are illustrated with happy faces because they are healthy for us!

  • Grade 1
    Grade 2
    Grade 3
  • 30 to 60 minutes
  • Directions

    1. Allow students the opportunity to experience a story on healthy foods either in a whole class setting, in small groups, or individually. Provide class time after the experiences to talk about what they have read and learned. Talk about familiar fruits and vegetables, including their colors, how they taste, and textures. Use a classroom white board and Crayola® Dry Erase Markers to document student contributions to the discussion.
    2. Working in pairs or individually, ask students to select a single vegetable or fruit to investigate. Ask the class for questions they should focus on during this investigation such as: Why is it important for us to eat this food? What nutritional value does it have? Where does it grow? How is it harvested? Assist students, as needed, during the research period. Ask them to write down the answers to their questions.
    3. Have available in the classroom a variety of well-known works of art that are portraits, such as the "Mona Lisa" painted by Leonardo da Vinci. Have students discuss the facial expressions they see in the portraits. Do these people look as if they are eating healthy fruits and vegetables? If the answer is yes, have students provide supporting detail such as, "Her eyes look like they are smiling!"
    4. Display fresh vegetable and fruit products for children to touch and use as a reference for their drawings. Include in the display prints of fine art still life paintings, such as Emma Jane Cady's "Fruit in a Glass Compote" to assist with inspiring creativity.
    5. Using Crayola Color Wonder™ Paper, have children draw and color one or more imaginative fruits or vegetables with Color Wonder Markers. Suggest the addition of a face for each fruit or vegetable, including eyes, a nose, and mouth for the freggie portrait. If Color Wonder products are not available, Crayola Washable Markers and Construction Paper Crayons can be substituted with construction paper.
    6. Provide time in the school day schedule for students to present their artwork to classmates, explaining which freggies they have illustrated, the type of expressions they have included on the faces, etc. Encourage students to include in their presentations facts about the fruits or vegetables gathered during their research.
  • Standards


    LA: Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.


    SCI: Analyze a representation of a particular habitat showing the locations and shapes of both land and water features of that habitat and communicate how the land and water support animals and plants.

    VA: Students will initiate making works of art and design by experimenting, imagining and identifying content.

    VA: Students will demonstrate that art communicates meaning through sharing their work and the work of others.

    VA: Students experience, analyze and interpret art and other aspects of the visual world.

  • Adaptations

    Possible classroom resources include: Good Enough to Eat: A Kid's Guide to Food and Nutrition by Lizzy Rockwell; Spriggles Motivational Books for Children: Health & Nutrition by Jeff Gottlieb & Martha Gottlieb

    How are fruits and vegetables part of a healthy diet? Students work in teams to investigate what eating healthy means and how eating fruit and vegetables help to keep them healthy. What other foods are also good for them? What foods are not good for children to eat? Organize a presentation for classmates. Students discuss what they do eat each day and how they may want to alter their eating habits.

    Students work in small groups to write an original one-act play consisting of fruit and vegetable characters that are trying to eat right and be healthy. Students should be prepared to perform for classmates. Create costumes using recycled materials.


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