Educare Omaha helps teach children about healthy eating
March 03, 2014
The Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition created five instructional videos for educating children about nutrition during meals featuring Educare Omaha. The videos, including “Teaching Taste, Texture, and Color,” and “Teaching Nutritional Benefits of Eating Healthy Foods,” show how early care providers and parents can use conversation to teach children the importance of good nutrition and help them form healthy habits from a young age.
“It’s important to have healthy experiences with food in early childhood so that children can have theexperiences of texture and taste of a variety of foods, especially healthy foods,” said Deborah Winkelmann, site director, Educare Omaha at Indian Hill.
Winkelmann explained that the videos are important because they provide professional development for early learning teachers and also show families different ideas for what they can do with children during mealtimes to instill healthy habits.
For example, Jane Boulter, a lead teacher at Educare, explains how adults can engage children using questions and statements, such as “How many different colors do you see?” “Why do we need our milk?” and “Eating these carrots will help keep your eyes healthy so that your eyes are like binoculars” to build food exposure, vocabulary and understanding.
A downloadable workbook is also available for adults to use to take notes and reflect on the lessons. Watch the introductory video below. To watch the instructional videos, and for more information and resources, visit CenterforNutrition.org.
