Website Archive - March, 2007
Spotlight on Nutrition and Music
Children
Here are some websites with activities for children to enjoy online.
Since March is Music in Schools Month, visit Hop Pop Town, a website that encourages children to improvise and use musical sequences and instruments. Have fun visiting Hoppy Hill, Poppy Street, and Hop Pop Hall.
The Sounds pages on Julia’s Rainbow Corner has drum sounds, keyboard sounds, and a Let’s Sing section featuring the Eensy Weensy Spider and ABCs.
One banana, two bananas is a fruit and vegetable counting song by Boowa and Kwala from the UpToTen.com website.
Parents
Here are some tips and activities for practicing good nutrition with your child(ren).
Do you receive the Penn State Cooperative Extension Better Kid Care Program: Caring for Kids Newsletter? Here is their Kids Can Cook newsletter covering tips and ideas for cooking with young children, recipes, and age-appropriate activities for developing kitchen skills.
You can also receive the Better Kid Care Monthly Newsletter electronically by clicking on the email address under the Better Kid Care Newsletters and Publications on the Information for Parents page.
The Family Resource and Referral Center in San Joaquin County has some simple and safe activities that 2, 3, 4, and 5 year olds can do in the kitchen to help prepare food.
On Kaboose, Inc.’s The Kaboose Family Network, there is a Food page for families. Included in this section are tips on cooking with kids, online videos with tips, a Healthy Eating Guide, and lots of recipes for meals and snacks.
NICKtrition from the Nick Jr. website offers a sing-a-long for you and your child with the Fruit and Vegetable Family. There are also Top Tips about eating habits, including sensible snacking, drinking water, five a day of fruits and vegetables, and dealing with fussy eaters.
Teachers
There are so many websites offering resources on nutrition, and we’ve highlighted just a few. So check them out!
A to Z Teacher Stuff has a Nutrition Unit with lessons on being healthy, making a food collage, food bingo, colors of food, and the difference between fruits and vegetables.
Education World has an archived March 3, 2004 Early Childhood Education Newsletter that has nutrition suggestions for National Nutrition Month and music activities for Music in Our Schools Month. There are also website links with additional information and activities on nutrition.
Another archived newsletter, the February 2005 Early Childhood Education Newsletter from Education World, includes nutrition activites and website links for additional resources.
You can also sign up for Education World’s free Early Childhood Education Newsletter that includes a very brief article on a timely theme of interest plus links to online resources connected to that theme. When you sign up, you will receive a confirmation subscription email. Click on the URL in the email and your subscription will be confirmed.
The May 2006 issue of Young Children, the Journal of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, has some excellent articles and resources on Nutrition and Fitness.
Are you looking for recipes to use in your child care facility? Check out the following:
The USDA Recipes for Child Care is an extensive alphabetical list of recipes for Child Nutrition Programs. At present , these updated recipes are only available on the Web from the National Food Service Management Institue (NFSMI) and the USDA/FNS’ Team Nutrition and Healthy Meals Resource System.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) also has a listing of websites for recipes, activities and guidelines to use when cooking with children on their Recipe and Meal Planning page as part of their Team Nutrition/Healthy Meals Resource System.
One more set of recipes….The National Network of Child Care (NNCC) has a number of child-friendly recipes on their Recipes for Kids page. At the end of most of the recipes, there is a link to a nutrition-related article in the NNCC’s documents.
Have you ever made Stone Soup? Here are 3 Stone Soup recipes and activities that go along well with this nutrition theme:
A Place of Our Own is a daily TV series, website, and outreach program of the Community Television of Southern California and is produced in association with Sesame Workshop and 44 Blue Productions, Inc.
Read a Portugese fable online at DLTK’s Growing Together and make a clay pot, name tags, bingo, or memory cards.
Making Stone Soup is a song by Jean Warren of the Preschool Express which can be sung while making the soup. There are also other songs dealing with food in the Food Songs and Rhymes page of Preschool Express.
[Posted on February 28, 2007]
