 |
|||
 |
|||
Healthy
|
|||
Nutrition Activites
National surveys show that many children nine-to-19 years of age are not getting the recommended daily amount of calcium. Do the children in your care get enough calcium? You can find out by answering the following questions. Do they drink fruit drinks, punch, or soft drinks with their breakfast? At snack time? With lunch of dinner? Do they eat mainly cookies or pastries for snacks and desserts?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you can work with parents to help children develop good feelings about dairy foods and other calcium-rich foods. Children who develop milk-drinking habits early in life may continue drinking calcium-rich milk as they get older.
An important concept that young children can understand easily concerns the connections between milk and bones. Milk, as well as other dairy foods, contains calcium that makes bones strong. You can explain to your children that they need to build bones now that will last for the rest of their lives. Bones form the frame for the body, and healthy bones will help them grow taller and stronger. So milk drinkers are "bone builders!"
Children can have fun learning about milk and dairy foods. Here are some activities which will help children learn about milk and dairy foods.
Molly-MOO Is Blue
This activity is fun for the very young children in your care and will help children recognize dairy products or other foods that contain calcium. Using a toy cow or picture, introduce the children to "Molly-MOO" by reciting this poem: "Meet Molly-MOO, She sounds so blue. You can make her happy. Here's what you can do."
Tell the class that Molly the cow will be happy and will MOO when she hears that she is very important. Show pictures cut from magazines or ask the children to think of foods made from Molly's milk (for example: milk, buttermilk, cheeses, ice cream). You may also discuss foods that include milk and milk products (for example: macaroni and cheese, homemade pudding, pizza). There are many right answers! Have Molly "moo" when these foods are mentioned.
Take a Look Inside
You can help make the connection between drinking milk and growing strong bodies by using a light source and some x-ray images to show children what bones look like. A local health professional could visit and talk about how bones grow. You could even take a trip to a hospital x-ray department. Finally, ask the children if anyone can show the rest of the class some of their bones, and see if anyone thinks of their teeth!
Bony Experiment
All dairy foods, except butter, are important for making bones and teeth strong. Try this easy experiment to show what would happen to our bones without the calcium they get from dairy products. First, clean a chicken leg bone by soaking it in several cups of water with 1/4 cup chlorine bleach. The next day, rinse the bone and allow it to dry. Then, place the bone in a bowl or jar of vinegar. Leave it for several days. Remove the chicken bone from the vinegar and wiggle it. The bone will be soft and flexible. Explain that the bone has lost its calcium. Ask, "Could you stand up with bones like this?"
Skeleton Builders
The job of bones is to support the body and give it shape. Save and clean the bones of a whole chicken by soaking them in water and bleach as explained above. Let the children sort the bones by shape. Let them find similar bones on the picture of a human skeleton. Children can feel their own bones and compare how their fingers, ribs, vertebrae, skull, and leg bones feel. Children may take turns arranging the bones to build a "cool" chicken.
1 cup? 2 cups? 3 cups? More?
The amount of milk a child needs each day depends on the age of the child. Children one-three years old need the equivalent of 2 cups of milk per day; children age four-eight years need 3 cups per day; and adolescents age nine-18 years need 4 cups per day. This activity uses a gallon milk jug to let children solve a story problem, and helps build math skills while teaching about nutrition.
Show the children a gallon jug of milk. Ask children to predict how many cups are in the jug (there are 16 eight-ounce cups in a gallon). Pour cups of milk to show how many cups are in the jug. For older children, you may discuss how many cups of milk each child needs per day. Using math skills, help them figure out how many children can get their daily requirement from one gallon. If you can do this activity at meal or snack time, you may let each child drink a cup of milk. (If you are not doing this at snack or meal time, you may want to use a milk jug filled with water.)
Purple Cow Milk Break
Here's a snack-time activity that is fun to do and good to drink! Remind children that it is cool to drink milk to make strong, long bones. (Makes 25 6-ounce servings)
Ingredients:
1 gallon of cold milk (regular, reduced-fat, low-fat, or fat-free)
1 12-ounce can frozen grape juice concentrate
6-7 bananas (peeled, cut in chunks, and frozen)
Blend the milk and grape juice concentrate. Add frozen banana chunks to milk mixture (the bananas add body to the drink.) Thoroughly blend all ingredients. Serve immediately.
Burgin Fowlkes, RD,LD, Senior Nutrition Educator, Health Promotion and Communications Jefferson County Alabama Dept. of Health
|
Healthy Childcare® Home Page | Library | Search | Questions & Answers | Links
I Am Amazing | Hip On Health | Health & Safety Resource Guide | Order Form
Product Spotlight | Free Issue | Publisher's Letter | Contact Us | Author Guidelines HEALTHY CHILD PUBLICATIONS Last Revised: |
||