The early years in a child's life are critical ones to the formation of health promoting nutritional concepts and behavior. Children often take these attitudes and habits they form during their early childhood years into adulthood. There is no better time to teach children the importance of good nutrition. My objective was to create a nutrition, food safety and health curriculum using literature that has a food-related theme.
Many picture books talk about food in fun and creative ways.
This method provides opportunities to strengthen food and nutrition activities that will encourage healthy eating. After completing a search of various food, nutrition, reading and science early childhood education curricula through Cooperative Extension Systems, Child Nutrition Programs, Head Start and Day Care providers, no one program accomplished my objective, but many offered excellent age appropriate activities. Therefore, I developed a curriculum by selecting five children's books with a food-related theme. The value of my sabbatical leave gave me the opportunity to research and develop educational materials for the K-2 audience. By using this newly created curriculum, literacy activities will be enhanced while children learn healthy eating habits.