Child Mindful Eating Lessons by Mindfully Growing
What is the Child Mindful Eating Lessons Curriculum?
The Mindfully Growing Curriculum is a 10-lesson program designed to help children explore food, plants, and mindful eating through sensory-based learning and hands-on activities.
Overall, the curriculum fosters curiosity, body awareness, and a positive relationship with food in a developmentally appropriate and engaging way.
- Lessons 1 and 2 introduce children to how plants grow and where food comes from, using beans and peas to spark curiosity and scientific thinking.
- Lessons 3 through 8 focus on the five senses – touch, sight, smell, sound, and taste – helping children connect sensory experiences to food exploration and mindful eating practices.
- Lesson 9 teaches children to recognize hunger and fullness cues and introduces basic digestion concepts through interactive visual aids.
- Lesson 10 brings everything together by emphasizing food as a connector, encouraging children to share, reflect, and use all their senses during a final group tasting activity.
Child Mindful Eating Lessons Overview
Lesson 1 Where Food Comes From
- Key Activities: Sprouting beans, bean song/dance, green bean tasting
- Learning Focus: Scientific thinking, how plants grow from seeds
- Learning Goals: Understand plant life cycles and develop curiosity
About Lesson 1 Where Food Comes From
Children will learn about how plants and seeds grow through participating in various activities and engaging with materials as a class. Activities include: sprouting beans in a plastic bag, looking at pictures of different types of beans, a fresh green bean tasting, and learning a bean song and dance. In this lesson, children will be able to develop scientific and critical thinking skills, pondering how one bean can grow into a bean plant that we can eat.
Lesson 2 Seeds & Plants
- Key Activities: Seed detective game, sugar snap pea tasting
- Learning Focus: Understanding food origins, seed-to-plant connections
- Learning Goals: Recognize seeds as the starting point of many foods
About Lesson 2 Seeds & Plants
Children will learn more about food seeds and plants, building off last week’s lesson. Activities include: playing “seed detective” and guessing which seeds belong to which plants by looking at various fruits and vegetables along with their seeds, and a sugar snap pea tasting. In this lesson, children will continue to make connections regarding how the food we eat grows and where it comes from.
Lesson 3 Five Senses Intro
- Key Activities: “No Ordinary Apple” book, apple tasting
- Learning Focus: Introduction to senses, mindful eating foundation
- Learning Goals: Begin exploring how senses help us experience food
About Lesson 3 Five Senses Intro
Children will begin learning about the 5 senses, and how we use them to interpret the work around us. Through a class discussion, reading the “No Ordinary Apple” book, and tasting an apple, children will begin to connect how we use our senses in our daily lives, including when we are eating. This lesson will lay the foundation for mindful eating practices, by encouraging children to explore the five senses.
Lesson 4 Sense of Touch
- Key Activities: Guessing fruits/vegetables by touch
- Learning Focus: Exploring texture, tactile food exploration
- Learning Goals: Use touch to identify and describe food characteristics
About Lesson 4 Sense of Touch
Children will learn more about the sense touch, specifically in the context of food. By participating in a guessing game, where they will guess fruits and vegetables based only on touch, children will understand the concept of touch and how it fits into eating in more depth. In this lesson, a hands on approach helps children to better understand why touch is important when exploring foods.
Lesson 5 Sense of Sight
- Key Activities: “Edible Colors” book, bell pepper tasting
- Learning Focus: Visual observation, eating the rainbow
- Learning Goals: Observe food colors and connect sight to healthy eating
About Lesson 5 Sense of Sight
Children will learn about the sense of sight and the importance of “eating the rainbow.” Activities include: reading the book, Edible Colors, as a class, observing the inside of a pepper and its seeds, and tasting a bell pepper with ranch dressing. In this lesson, children will connect the sense of sight to mindful eating, by learning to observe different colors and parts of their food.
Lesson 6 Sense of Smell
- Key Activities: Smelling spices, cinnamon apple tasting
- Learning Focus: Descriptive language, smell- taste connection
- Learning Goals: Identify food smells and relate them to taste and memory
About Lesson 6 Sense of Smell
Children will explore the sense of smell by describing smells in their environment and smelling different spices. Through smelling different foods, learning descriptive words for food smells (spicy, sweet, fruity, etc.), and connecting smells to taste, children will make connections between smell, food, and using smell to eat mindfully. The lesson will conclude with a cinnamon apple tasting.
Lesson 7 Sense of Sound
- Key Activities: Kitchen sounds, popcorn tasting
- Learning Focus: Auditory awareness, sound-food connection
- Learning Goals: Recognize how sound contributes to food experiences
About Lesson 7 Sense of Sound
Children will learn about the sense of sound through the lens of Kitchen sounds.” By imagining what a busy kitchen would sound like and describing it to their classmates, and learning about why popcorn kernels “pop,” they will be able to connect how the sense of sound can be used to observe food and eat mindfully. The lesson will end with a popcorn tasting and story time.
Lesson 8 Sense of Taste
- Key Activities: Mindful eating activity, raisin tasting
- Learning Focus: Integrating senses with focus on taste
- Learning Goals: Practice mindful eating using all senses
About Lesson 8 Sense of Taste
Children will learn about the sense of taste, a critical component in mindful eating. This lesson will tie in aspects from other lessons, such as thinking about where food comes from, and incorporating using the senses of touch, sight and smell to examine foods before eating. The main activity will be a raisin tasting, and children will learn to practice mindful eating through this.
Lesson 9 Hunger & Fullness
- Key Activities: Digestive system visuals, stomach bag activity, avocado tasting
- Learning Focus: Body awareness, listening to hunger cues
- Learning Goals: Learn to identify and respond to hunger and fullness signals
About Lesson 9 Hunger & Fullness
Children will learn about hunger and fullness and be able to describe how these feel. They will also learn about where food goes once it is eaten using visual aids of the digestive system. The main activity will be using bags to represent the stomach and filling them with balls that represent food. This will help children have a visual reference of an empty stomach, a full or stuffed stomach, and one that is just right. Children will be encouraged to listen to their bodies as they eat at home.
Lesson 10 Food & Connection
- Key Activities: “Thank You, Omu” book, food caterpillar snack and tasting
- Learning Focus: Sharing food, using all senses, mindful eating recap
- Learning Goals: Appreciate food as a way to connect with others and reflect on mindful eating
About Lesson 10 Food & Connection
Children will learn about how food connects us through reading a book (Thank you, Omu) about sharing food, sharing a snack together through an interactive tasting where children will build a “food caterpillar.” This lesson will be the culmination of the past lessons, where children learned to eat mindfully and examine foods using their senses. They will once again practice deep breathing (hot cocoa breaths) and describe their snack using all the senses they learned about previously.
Download Lesson 1: Food Comes From Plants
Download our free example lesson, Food Comes from Plants, to get a detailed look at how we design our fun and engaging lessons to promote healthy eating habits in preschool children.
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