Working Together to Optimize Healthy Eating in the Early Years
September 4, 2019
Earlier this year, Nutrition Connections and Region of Peel – Public Health developed and delivered a series of healthy eating workshops for educators, cooks and managers working in the childcare sector in Peel. This was a great opportunity to work collaboratively while taking advantage of our respective strengths to help early childhood service providers:
- become familiar with the Menu Planning and Supportive Nutrition Environment in the Child Care Setting: Practical Guide and other supporting resources;
- learn more about how to incorporate local food into their centres;
- obtain feedback on increasing variety and healthy options in menus; and,
- share ideas about foods, recipes and food literacy activities suitable for young children and that work well in this setting.
Through pre and post knowledge checks, workshop participants demonstrated an increased understanding of how to make a complete meal and snack, as well as which foods could be served all the time versus those that could only be served sometimes or not at all.
While we were happy to see these results, the true gem of the workshop was the sharing of stories, tips, tricks and resources amongst the participants. It was clear that the participants enjoyed learning from each other.
We could not have created and delivered this workshop without our dedicated interns. A big thank you to Alyssa Ramuscak and Saima Khan, both completing their Master’s in Health Sciences in Nutrition Communication at Ryerson University. Thank you also to Ashley Motran and Eva Loewenberger at Region of Peel – Public Health and to Child Development Resource Connection Peel for opportunity to be involved in raising the bar for early childhood education.
Planning healthy eating workshops in your community? We can help! Contact Candace at caqui@opha.on.ca for more information.