Hy-Vee® KidsFit™

Eating together as a family is important.  Family meals help increase self-esteem, create sense of well-being, and foster a positive association with food and mealtime. Family connections can also increase by as much as 50%!  The more meals you have together, the stronger your family becomes.

Try challenging your family to eat 7 meals together this week.  This could be breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and could mean eating out or at home. Just make sure those devices are put away to help create family conversation.  Here are some ideas and questions to get the conversation started:

1. Go around and talk about your favorite moment of day, what made you proud, etc.
2. Create a jar of topics or questions to keep at the table and take turns choosing and discussing.
3. Parents: if your child is learning the alphabet or learning how to spell, try picking a letter and having them name things they saw that day that begin with that letter.
4. Take turns playing games like “Would you rather?”, “True or False?”, or “What did you see?”
5. Design your own place mat! Get a piece of paper and some crayons or markers and color your own.  Show them off at dinner (before the plates are down!) and talk about the designs.
6. Cook the meal together!  For older kids, this is a great opportunity to learn how to navigate the kitchen (and grocery store), how to follow a recipe, and tackle the project that is cooking a meal for the whole family.

Keep track of your meals together with our Family Meal Tracker worksheet!