Talk to the preschool children about vegetables. Show them a basket of vegetables and point out carrots, lettuce, celery, squash, potatoes and whatever else you choose to put into the basket. Print a page with a variety of foods from fruit and vegetables to breads and nuts on store shelves. Then instruct the preschool children to mark foods that are vegetables. Provide cutouts of the vegetables for the preschoolers to glue onto the picture once they’ve identified the vegetables. After showing the basket of vegetables, have the preschool children draw and color their favorite vegetable or one that looks like it would taste good.
Take preschoolers on a tour of a grocery store or fruit stand, show them real fruit or illustrations of fruit found in local grocery stores. Print an uncolored illustration of fruit and ask the preschool children to color the fruit appropriately. In other words, ask them to color an apple either green or red, to color an orange an orange color and to color pears yellow. Glue the colored sheets onto large sheets of green paper to create a frame for the fruit pictures.
Provide the preschool children with paper grocery bags. Have them color and cut out a variety of foods found in the grocery store. The children glue the foods to the outside of the bag. At the top, help them add the title, “Name of Preschooler’s Grocery Bag.” If this is a school situation, seek parents’ cooperation in allowing the preschool children to take their bags to the store and fill them as the family shops for groceries. The title could also be, “Good Foods to Eat” with the focus on healthy choices. Instead of promoting the actual use of the bag, punch a hole in the top of each bag and add a tie so the children can hang the bags up at home as a grocery store craft.
Collect ads from magazines, mail circulars and store flyers. Prepare the background of the collage by giving the preschool children a plain sheet of heavyweight paper to use for a poster. Draw a 2 inch border around the edges of the poster. Provide crayons or paint so the preschool children can color the border. For a variation, help them glue ribbon or rounds of colorful yarn to make a frame around the poster. For another variation, start with a green sheet and cut colorful construction strips to glue on for the border. Let the preschool children choose, from the ads available, the food products they wish to use to create a “My Favorite Foods” collage. Help the preschool children cut out the foods and glue them to their poster. Punch a hole and add a yarn tie to hang on the wall. Create different collages with titles such as “All About Veggies” or “Fruit I Love.”