Kai Time HANDY ACTIONS
- Achieve the Heart Foundation Tohu Manawa Ora | Healthy Heart Award
- Get support from a Healthy Active Learning Advisor.
- Ensure your service caters for children with health conditions e.g. allergies or food intolerances.
- Raise awareness around recognising food related choking hazards.
- Involve an independent person e.g. nutritionist/dietician/health promoter in menu review and update.
- Ensure your service adheres to food safety requirements and regulations.
- Promote healthy food and drink policy/guidelines in the staff induction folder/process.
- Encourage families from all cultures to provide healthy recipes that can be included as part of the menu.
- Ensure staff involved in meal preparation e.g. cooks have regular food safety training and/or apply the recommended food safety procedures at all times.
- Plant an edible garden such as a maara kai at your ELS. Seek support from a local kaumatua to establish maara kai gardens using traditional systems of food production guided by Tikanga Māori and the values of their ancestors.
-
Get tamariki involved in the growing, maintaining and harvesting. Use the produce for cooking/snacks or send home to parents and whānau.
-
Seek support from local kaumatua to share pūrākau (stories) about gathering and cultivating kai. Arrange an excursion to explore where food comes from (such as a berry farm or orchard).
-
Set up self-help water stations e.g. children friendly water jugs and cups.
-
Encourage birthday celebrations to have a play dough cake or cake made from fruit or to have non-food focus e.g. sharing a new game/ book/story with the child whose birthday it is playing a leading/prominent role.
-
Organise a shared healthy kai where kai is all the same colour.
-
Encourage children to actively participate in cooking, tasting, and smelling of nutritious foods. Make a ‘feely box’ with some fruits and vegetables inside for children to feel and identify. Consider different and interesting ways to prepare and present food.
-
Encourage your ELS to do a left over fruit drive. This could be a great fundraising idea.
-
Get tamariki to make vegetable soup as a fun, winter activity. Allocate each child a vegetable to bring e.g. celery, carrots, onion, cauliflower, parsnip, turnip, pumpkin, potatoes. Choose vegetables that are in season and more affordable for families.
-
Encourage parents to eat at regular meal times so their child knows when to expect to eat, rather than feeling uncertain or unsure. This can be initiated through your ELS’s regular meal times as well.
-
Provide parents with swap options e.g. grainy crackers vs potato chips, whole fruit vs fruit juice, yogurt vs ice cream.
- Children learn about new food through their senses. It is important for children to learn to enjoy a variety of health foods and drinks:
- Take an orange:
- Look – Titiro – at the colour, shape and size
- Feel – whakapa atu – the peel, pith, skin and flesh of the segments, and juice. Ask them to describe what it feels like
- Smell – hongia – mmmm! The juice, zest and skin
- Listen – whakarongo – to the sounds as it is peeled and segmented, as it is rolled on the table, as it touches another orange, as you tap on its surface
- Taste – ngaoa – is it sweet or sour? What are the differences between the juice, flesh, peel?
- Take an orange:
- Teach or help children to:
- Wash and dry hands first
- Use clean utensils
- Keep work surfaces clean
- Clean up afterwards.
- Make drinking water fun and exciting. Make naturally flavoured water by adding slices of fresh strawberries, lemon, mint, cucumber, oranges or blueberries.
- Put together a sweet drink display to show how much sugar is hidden in common sweet drinks such as soft drinks, fruit juice, sport drinks and energy drinks.
- Share information about practical activities parents can try at home.
- Encourage parents to involve children in making healthy food choices.
- Shall we have rice or potatoes?
- Would you like broccoli or cabbage?
- Do you want peanut butter or lettuce and tomato sandwiches
- Provide examples of ways parents and staff can make children feel special or rewarded e.g. spending time playing with them, or giving stickers or stamps as rewards instead of lollies.
- Support whanau and tamariki to set their own goals around healthy eating using this printable chart
