LCCAA Head Start Celebrates National Nutrition Month
Family Style Meals Promote Interaction
Mealtime is a great opportunity Food shapes and colors are expected to encourage and support child to be discussed, but so much more development. happens during breakfast, lunch and snack time in a Head Start classroom.
meal service is a great opportunity for all of these to happen.
These daily interactions help build student social skills like cooperation and qualities like responsibility and helpfulness. Children look to teachers and their classmates for guidance, communication, and role modeling expectations. Family Style
“It tends to be the connection for family tradition and culture. There are so many chances for students to learn during meal service such as their language and fine motor skills developing during these student teacher interactions.”
During the pandemic, LCCAA Head Start teachers have made modifications to these routines, but Meal times support all the domains eating Family Style remains a best of learning and provide opportunities practice in the program, according to practice and master new skills for to Health and Nutrition Specialist daily living: using a cup and eating Rebecca Rodriguez. utensils, pouring their own milk, “Food is more than just setting a table, cleaning. nourishment,” Rodriguez said.
Try Days Benefit Students, Families When LCCAA Head Start began offering Try Days in 2017, the goal was to encourage children to try new things. The popular program grew and has become much more. “Try Day engages and encourages the children and families to try new foods in a creative way,” said Health and Nutrition Specialist Rebecca Rodriguez. “It also gives our team a chance to try new things while keeping in mind accessibility and affordability for our families who want to duplicate the items at home.” Try Days include classroom experiences with whole foods, tasting for students and – prior to the pandemic – tasting for parents. Parents who try the items can enter a drawing to win a kitchen-related prize. The classroom with the most students who sample the new item becomes the Try Day Champion. Recipes are also shared. “It serves so many different purposes and adds to the level of engagement,” Rodriguez said. For a typical Try Day, classrooms are given the food in its raw, whole form. For example, when cauliflower was recently tried, whole heads of cauliflower were passed around in classrooms. Teachers also had access to resources such as videos describing how the vegetable grows.
Children can see, smell and touch the food before they taste it, Rodriguez said. In the case of cauliflower, raw chunks were offered with the kitchen’s homemade ranch Dietician Marge Robison hosts dressing and a riced cauliflower a lobby tasting for Try Day in dish was part of a early 2020. lunch that week. In February, quinoa was scheduled to be served in a Mango Quinoa Salad when Head Start centers had to close early due to a snowstorm. The staff in Head Start’s central kitchen pivoted quickly and more than 300 cups of the salad were sent home. That flexibility had already been on display as staff packaged and provided hundreds of virtual meals. “It was a good feeling to know we were able to get it to the families,” Rodriguez said. Rodriguez and her staff continue to look for ways to enhance the Try Day experience.
