Health and Safety Education

Critical Thinking Question

1. What safety considerations should be addressed when cooking with children? How would you accommodate the needs of children with allergies without having to eliminate working with foods as part of the curriculum?

One area of great importance in developing healthy lifelong habits is in making decisions about eating. As soon as they begin to eat solid foods, infants and toddlers begin to indicate preferences for things they like or don’t like, and enjoy learning the names of foods. Preschoolers display curiosity about what is in food and how it is grown and made; hence cooking/gardening activities are an important part of many early childhood curricula. Food preparation activities also integrate science, math, literacy, and sociocultural learning. Snack and mealtimes provide opportunities to talk about healthy eating and also to teach conversation skills, manners, and good eating habits (Hendrick & Weissman, 2007; Marotz, Cross, & Rush, 2001). In the Reggio Emilia schools, the kitchen is often designed as a central architectural feature, visible to children, with food preparation personnel considered key assets to the curriculum (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1998).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides many resources for teachers, children, and families, including information about initiatives such as the Farm to School program, which encourages schools to purchase fresh food from local farms and other producers, and a special section of their website devoted to Health and Nutrition Information for Preschoolers. Additionally, the USDA has created a graphic, known as MyPlate, to help consumers of all ages put together a healthy diet. Shaped like a dinner plate, this colorful diagram illustrates the types of foods, and proportions of each, that make up a healthy diet. It can be displayed in the classroom and used to help children learn about food groups, and how to plan a healthy meal.

Teachers promote concepts that support health standards related to nutrition with activities we discuss in the following section, focusing on:

• The names of foods and food groups
• Characteristics of foods, such as color, texture, flavor, smell
• Where foods come from
• The difference between healthy and unhealthy foods
• The basics of food safety
• What a recipe is and how to follow one
• Food as fuel the body needs for energy, growth, and health (Marotz, Cross, & Rush, 2001)

Activities with Foods

As with other curricular areas, children learn best through active involvement and hands-on experiences. There is an active, unresolved debate in early childhood education about the developmental or cultural appropriateness of including food items in play activities, such as some of those mentioned in Chapter 7 (e.g., using rice in the sensory table or pasta for collage) (Marotz, Cross & Rush, 2001; Swim & Freeman, 2004). Some believe that the use of food items such as rice in a sensory table is appropriate as this provides an inexpensive source for materials with sensory qualities that are hard to duplicate with commercial materials. Others believe, given the economic hardships experienced by many families in America and around the world, using items that could otherwise be consumed as food is wasteful.

However, food activities with a focus on nutritionincluding guided food preparation, games, songs/poems, puzzles, manipulatives, dramatic play props, art, field trips, tasting parties, and gardeningcan provide rich learning experiences across the curriculum. Children can use the MyPlate logo as a format to apply concepts they are learning about foods, nutrition, and healthy menus vicariously, by placing or pasting pictures of foods into appropriate categories or with hands-on activities and experiences with real foods. All activities that involve preparation or tasting foods should be planned with consideration for any children who have documented food allergies.

Many children’s picture books have food themes, and nonfiction books about foods or food products can be readily incorporated into the classroom library as needed (e.g., cookbooks; books on vegetable or herb gardening; and books about animals, fish, and plants from which foods are derived). The appendix includes a comprehensive list of books with food themes that teachers can use to support activities with foods.

The idea of a recipe is not difficult for young children to grasp, since they are learning one-, two-, and three-step directions already, although their immature understanding of mathematical concepts such as fractions and proportions can lead to some very amusing moments! Consider this recipe contributed by 3-year-olds for a class book made and duplicated as a take-home project; it provides insight regarding what Caroline knows about ingredients, measurement, the steps in following a recipe, and cooking safety.

Caroline’s Banana Pie

20 spoons of salt
11 cups of flour
1 cup of spices
10 strawberries
8 bananas

Stir it. Mix it. Put tea in it. Put it in the oven. We take it out of the oven.

We wait on it till it cools off. Then we get to eat it.

Activities with foods connect with concepts about nutrition. For example, Figure 8.2 displays activities that could be planned to explore learning about vegetables, using four major concepts about food as organizers.

Ideas for studies of other food types or groups can be similarly planned. Table 8.6 lists suggestions for themes and activities across the food spectrum.