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Your kids can learn to crave Broccoli. Here is how..

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kids-broccoli

If there is one vegetable that is loathed in our household, it is the humble broccoli. I am not sure what it is about this vegetable, but our kids hate it and don’t want to touch it. I believe that that is the same across many households around the world.

So what if you could train your (and of course, your kids) brains to actually crave and want Broccoli? Sounds crazy doesn’t it?

But new research suggests that it can be done.

Scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University and at Massachusetts General Hospital have shown that you can train your brain to fire the same “feel good” neurotransmitters for healthy food that you get when you eat a chocolate or donut. The brain “rewards” you by firing dopamine and it “sparkles” for fatty foods. But you can train your brain to do the same for Broccoli.

It all has to do with eating a low calorie, high fiber diet. Combine that with educating yourself over the effects of a nicer diet and you can, over time, actually crave that nice juicy piece of Broccoli, the same way you are craving a donut right now.

Want to give it a try?

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Christmas Ornament Learning Activities

These learning activities don’t use actual Christmas ornaments, but they do use the shapes of ornaments to aid in learning, or making an ornament with an educational twist.

Look We’re Learning has a set of printable worksheets using Christmas ornaments to learn about patterns that are the same and different. There are color and black and white versions included so you can have kids color all the ornaments, or just color the ones that match.

Learn about patterns and make your own with these free printables from Planes and Balloons. There are options for picking what comes next in a repeating pattern, blank ornaments so you can make your own pattern, and a coloring sheet with different designs of ornaments and you can draw lines to the matching ones or color them the same.

Little learners can practice tracing short lines with these printable ornaments from Fluffy Tots. You can get a sample for free or buy a set of 60 different ornaments that let kids practice short straight, curved and curly lines.

Add a bit of critical thinking to your Christmas learning activities with this Christmas decoder project from STEAM Powered Family. Use the symbols on the ornaments to decode the secret message, then find the word that matches and put the ornament back together. There are also blank ornaments so kids can write their own messages, or you can use the code to make up your own statements and have kids decode them.

Get kids coding for Christmas with these binary code ornaments from Little Bins for Little Hands. Once you know the basics of binary you can spell out holiday themed words, kids names or other secret messages and turn them into holiday ornaments.

And while we’re making ornaments with an educational twist, why not paint some ornaments that teach kids about symmetry? Download templates from Crafting a Fun Life or have kids draw their own, paint on half and make a symmetrical ornament that’s perfect for displaying in the classroom.