section 9
Taking care of nutrition
4 years
52 meeting
Let’s review:
Once the meeting starts, welcome everyone and ask the participants: • Who can help us remember what we talked about in our last meeting? • Who was able to do the activity at home that we asked you to do at the end of the meeting? How did it go? • Does anyone have questions or concerns after doing the activity?
What are we going to learn? We are going to learn how to provide good nutrition for four-year-olds and the importance of avoiding certain foods like soda. LET’S TALK ABOUT IT! We are going to look at some pictures, so we can talk about what we all know about this topic.
What strategies do you use to motivate your children to eat healthy food?
How do you make sure children wash their hands before they eat?
What do you do in your family to make sure that there is enough food for the whole family?
section 9 / 4 years • meeting 52
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Activity:
“The essentials” We are going to make a list of foods that are essential for a four-year-old child.
What we’ll need: • Paper
WHAT WE’LL DO: • Pencils, colored crayons – green, Ask participants to break into pairs and in those orange and blue pairs to make a list of foods that they gave their child the day before, from when they woke up to when they went to bed. (Those that can’t write can draw pictures of the foods.) • Then ask the pairs to draw a green circle around the foods that help their child to grow (proteins), an orange circle around the foods that give their child go (carbohydrates) and a blue circle around the foods that make them glow (vitamins and minerals). All of these foods are essential. • Ask the group which of these essential foods the child ate enough of and which they were missing? Ask them how they can provide the foods that are missing. What are some of the community’s resources that could help to produce and collect foods that are lacking for the children? How can others help families that have fewer resources to help their children? • After discussing a few ideas, make a plan on a piece of flipchart paper with a few activities that can be done together to improve the nutrition of the families and especially the children of the community.
Summing Up:
What did we learn today? Now, we’ll review what we discussed today. • How do you feel after this meeting? Why? • What are the two most important things you’ve learned today? • What will you do differently based on what you learned during the meeting? • What did you like the most? Are there things you didn’t like? • Do you have any remaining concerns or questions about what we talked about? To finish, what would you recommend to improve today’s meeting when we do it again with another group. (Explain that answering this question will help the meeting be even better in the future for parents with small children.)
To do at home:
Tell mothers to prepare healthy foods from the “essentials” group for their children and ask for help from one of the group members if they aren’t able to feed their family properly.
Facilitator’s Manual
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Basic information for the facilitator: Learning more about taking care of nutrition: 1- Malnutrition: when a child does not eat the kinds of food his body needs and in enough
quantity, the child becomes malnourished and will have one or more of the following: • Failure to grow in weight and height • Slowness in walking, talking or thinking • Big belly, thin arms and legs • Suffer from common illnesses that last longer, are more frequent and can lead to death • Lack of energy, looks sad and does not play • Swelling of face, feet and hands, often with sores on the skin • Thinning hair, loss of color and dull-looking hair • Can’t see at night
Remember: children with malnutrition suffer from diarrhea more frequently and each spell of diarrhea makes the malnutrition worst.
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A balanced and healthy diet can prevent malnutrition: • Feed small children at least 3–5 times a day with enough food • Provide main foods or staple food: “Go” foods (energy-giving) • Cereals and grains: wheat, rice, maize, sorghum, millet • Starchy roots: cassava, potatoes • Starchy fruits: banana, plantain ADD the following: • “Grow” foods (body-building) • Legumes: beans, peas, lentils • Nuts: walnuts, almonds, peanuts • Oil seeds: sesame, sunflower, olive • Animal products: milk, eggs, cheese, yogurt, meat, chicken, fish • “Glow” foods (protecting) • Vegetables: green leaf, tomatoes, carrots, pumpkin • Fruits: oranges, papaya, mangoes, etc. I couldn’t figure out where these boxes came from.
Families and community members need to make sure that these foods are available in the community to buy or they should grow them, or raise chickens, dairy cows or fish as a source of protein.
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Facilitator’s Manual