Food is an essential part of the health and development of a young child. Promoting healthy eating and nutrition to young children is a must to ensure that children create healthy lifestyle habits which they continue through adolescence and adulthood.
This topic is centred in the National Quality Standard, Quality Area 2: Children’s Health and Safety, which outlines the requirements for us early education educators to promote healthy eating and nutrition.
As educators, we have the best opportunity to teach our children about nutrition as childhood is where eating and lifestyle habits are established. Social interactions, various learning experiences and mealtimes allow us educators to communicate the healthy habits which they should aspire to have!
Through intentional learning, we teach our children about responsible decision making when it comes to eating choices, with them making confident decisions in the choices, further enhancing their critical thinking skills. Our mealtimes include foods which aim to meet a significant amount of a child’s nutritional requirements, as well water breaks regularly to promote staying hydrated.
Theorist, Vygotsky, believed that children will only learn essential skills such as healthy eating habits, by learning from the intentional teaching of more skilled peers and adults, which us educators strongly agree with, evident by our dedication to provide and teach our children the skills required to make healthy eating decisions.