I’m excited to announce that after a short break, we’re bringing back the Adventures in Eating feature on this blog! We’re excited for how it may positively impact teachers, children, and families. Mary Schroeder is the author of this feature. She works for the University of Minnesota Extension Office. Learn more about her below.

Discovering MyPlate – A Free Resource for Teaching Nutrition

I always enjoy reviewing new resources  to introduce children to food and nutrition. I’m especially excited about Discover MyPlate which is designed for kindergarten aged children.

Discover MyPlate (developed by the United States Department of Agriculture) is fun and inquiry-based nutrition education that fosters the development of healthy food choices and physically for kindergartners and it’s FREE to teachers in schools that participate in the school meal program.

Kindergarten teachers can meet education standards for Math, Science, English Language Arts, and Health using the 6 ready-to-go and interactive lessons. Children become food-smart as they practice counting, reading, writing, and more.

Each kit includes a Teacher’s Guide, emergent reader booklet, emergent reader word files, photo food cards, a food poster, and parent handouts in English and Spanish. The kit also contains one copy of each of the following for children to take home.

Emergent Reader Books – 6 different books  for children to take home! These 8-page books include kindergarten level sight words and black and white drawings for children to color.

Pictorial Recipe Cards – 4 recipes with English on one side and Spanish on the other. These are easy to make recipes you can make in the classroom or children can make at home with their families.

Student Workbook – 19 pages of activities to along with the 6 lessons in the Teacher’s Guide

You can go to the Discover MyPlate website where you can view all the materials. If you work in a school, use the resource order form to order your kit. If you don’t work at a school, you can still download all the materials for free.

As an early childhood educator you have a lot of creative ideas, please comment below on how you have used or plan to use these materials.

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Mary Schroeder works for the University of Minnesota Extension which helps to connect community needs with University of Minnesota resources.  Specifically the Health and Nutrition programs and resources focus on disease & obesity prevention, healthy school environments, and continuing education for community professionals.  You can link to the Extension Health and Nutrition website at: http://www.extension.umn.edu/health/