Healthy Menus for Early Childhood Age Groups Health, Medicine Essay

Welcome to Lesson 8. Every caregiver needs to know how to reduce the risk of infectious diseases and how to prevent illness in the child care setting. A child’s surroundings, including the air a child breathes, the surfaces a child touches, and the food a child eats, affect his or her health and well-being. No one can completely get rid of germs or diseases, but each person who cares for children can learn how to reduce the spread of infectious diseases by reducing the spread of disease-causing germs. Such simple steps as washing hands and diapering properly, cleaning and sanitizing work and play surfaces, airing out rooms, and handling food safely can reduce the risk of infections.
Caregivers can help children stay healthy by keeping all utensils, dishes, and food-handling surfaces as free from disease-causing germs as possible. Caregivers can also help children stay healthy by making sure the food they serve contains as few disease-causing germs as possible. Some basic rules remind caregivers how to prepare and handle food for children in a sanitary way:
Always wash hands with soap and water before, during, and after handling and serving food.
Cover hair with a hairnet; wear clean clothes and a clean apron while working with food.
Do not prepare, serve, or handle food when you have a skin infection or illness.
Follow all food storage guidelines as indicated in your textbook and by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
One topic in regard to food safety that I would like to emphasize is the risk of cross contamination. Contaminated foods contain germs or harmful substances that can cause food-borne illness. The transfer of germs from one food item to another is called cross contamination. This commonly happens when germs from raw food are transferred to cooked or ready-to-eat food via contaminated hands, equipment, or utensils. For example, bacteria from raw chicken can be transferred to ready-to-eat food, such as lettuce or tomatoes, when the same cutting board is used.
Including parents and sharing ethnic or traditional foods are important and vital to a successful nutrition education program. I recall in my early childhood education training that I had an assignment to interview a family with children from another culture and bring their language, dress, traditional foods, and games to the classroom to share with the children. I did not know anyone from a different culture with children at the time and I was working in a local sporting goods store. A woman from Iran came into the store with her two young children, and I seized the opportunity to have a conversation with her and ask for her assistance with my project. She invited me to her home for an afternoon and answered all of my questions. I learned so much from that experience and appreciated the opportunity to visit with her in her home with her family. I remember thinking how we are much more alike than we are different and how we appreciate the differences we do have when we have an opportunity to share traditions with each other. I encourage you to do this in your experiences with young children.
Include parents in the planning of menus. Encourage parents to share traditional and ethnic recipes. Children enjoy hearing about what family recipes have been passed down and what their friends eat at different holidays and meal times. Post menus weekly for parents so they can reinforce what has been learned at school and also to help parents understand their role in providing adequate nutrition and the development of healthy eating habits at home. Provide parents with recipes used at school and information about nutrition concepts that are currently being introduced. Providing workshops for parents in the evening on healthy cooking, nutrition, or ideas for cooking with children is a way to include parents. Another way to include parents is by having them assist with cooking activities in the classroom and with birthday and holiday celebrations.
Utilize the content in chapter readings for nutrition activities and have fun developing your own format to reinforce objectives you are currently working on. Plan your objectives, activities to meet those objectives, and an evaluation tool to provide feedback on the lesson to assist in future planning. We all learn from trial and error. I recall activities making butter, applesauce, ants on a log (peanut butter on celery with raisins on top), baked bread in a can, cinnamon toast, and muffins. The activities always tied in with the objectives we were working on. For example, we may have been celebrating summer, talking about the season, reading Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey as our language activity, planning a field trip to actually pick blueberries, talking about cleaning fruit, and having the children wash the blueberries. Finally, I had the children use the blueberries to make muffins for snack time. It is a nice way to plan to reinforce important concepts through meaningful experiences that tie together.
This is your final lesson in Good Health, Safety, and Nutrition. I hope you have enjoyed the material and find many ways to apply it to your work with young children. I have enjoyed sharing my knowledge and experiences with you.