Healthy Eating
The first years of a child's life may be the best opportunity for promoting the development of healthy eating behaviours that will be life-long. Early childhood services are unique in their ability to work alongside parents to provide early, positive, repeated experiences with healthy foods and assist children to learn to prefer and select these foods.
The balancing the lunchbox booklet is a popular lunchbox resource for orientation packs.
Services in the Hunter New England Local Health District can order hard copies of the booklet by contacting the Good for Kids Health Promotion Officers on hnelhd-goodforkids@health.nsw.gov.au
If your families are unsure on what foods to swap for a balanced lunchbox, this resource will provide some useful swaps and tips.
Click on the below headings for tips on creating a supportive eating environment, understanding children's eating choices and supporting fussy eaters.
The Munch & Move programs encourages services to intentionally plan healthy eating learning experiences at least twice a week.
So why do we want to plan healthy eating learning experiences?
Through play-based food activities, children have the opportunity to explore and learn about foods in an engaging way, separate from mealtimes. Food related games and activities are a great way to expose children to new and non-preferred foods, especially for fussy eaters or children who are nervous about trying new foods.
These experiences can be used to teach children in recognising different foods by shape, colour, size and texture, but it also provides them with opportunity to explore literacy and numeracy learning as well.
Identifying different fruits and vegetables and their properties provides children with opportunities to explore and develop an interest in different foods. This assists with the development of life-long healthy eating habits. Discussion and investigation are encouraged, and the opportunities for extending interests that arise are endless!
Books and recorded story readings about vegetables can be used to intentionally plan a healthy eating learning experience within your service. Click the image below for some books and recorded stories your service might like to use.
Packing school lunchboxes can be overwhelming for families as they transition their children from early childhood services to kindergarten. Use this tip sheet below to provide supportive strategies for families as they navigate packing school lunchboxes.
The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating shows a visual proportion summary of the five food groups that should be consumed over the day.
The caring for children - birth to 5 years, outlines the number of each food group serves early childhood services need to provide to children who attend care for 8 hours or more a day. Click the image below for a direct link to the menu planning section. 
The Munch & Move website will provide plenty more healthy eating resources for your service.
