Novel app to get children eating their vegetables
AN ACADEMIC from Loughborough University has helped develop a novel app for children that aims to get them eating more healthily and trying different vegetables.
In a bid to get children celebrating carrots, buzzing about broccoli and saying please to peas, Dr Emma Haycraft, of the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, and psychologists from Aston and De Montfort universities have created the ‘ Vegetable Maths Masters’ app.
The game, developed in conjunction with the British Psychological Society, is designed to expose children between three and seven-years-old to vegetables as they practise core maths skills developed in Key Stage 1.
It draws on findings from focus groups and interviews with parents, children and teachers who discussed their views on integrating strategies to support vegetable intake within an educational platform.
From practising counting to developing division skills, there are a range of games on the app that combine learning about numbers and interacting with vegetables.
When children complete problems on Vegetable Maths Masters, they are awarded stars and these can be used to buy props to decorate vegetable characters like ‘Sam the Squash’ and ‘Chloe the Carrot’.
Youngsters play as either a child, rabbit or teddy bear and throughout the game they ‘feed’ their avatars vegetables, which they respond to with positive verbal feedback.
Parents are also able to customise the game by selecting the vegetables (from a choice of 10) they want their children to play with.
Dr Haycraft said: “We know from our research that it can take a while for children to learn to like and become familiar with vegetables, and evidence suggests that we can do things away from the dinner table to help children to learn to like vegetables more.
“Vegetable Maths Masters was developed as a way to help children to become more familiar with vegetables whilst engaging in fun, mathsbased games.”
Vegetable Maths Masters is available for free and can be downloaded on iTunes and Android.