A Nutrition Education Program for Preschool Children Susan S. Davis, Eunice M. Bassler, Judith V. Anderson,1 and Holly C. Fryer

Department of Foods and Nutrition, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas 66506

Food habits established during the preschool years may affect a person's food behavior throughout life (I). If so, it is im­portant that preschool children learn ap­propriate food behavior during mealtime interactions and feedings. In the United States, nearly 20 million preschool chil­dren attend day care centers regularly (2). By law, meals and snacks served at these day care centers must meet specified nutri­tional standards, but most states do not re­quire the staffs of these centers to take courses in nutrition education. Conse­quently, nutritious food may be served to the children in an atmosphere that does not help them establish appropriate food behavior.

Providing courses on nutrition informa­tion for caregivers and mealtime activities for preschool children only partially can solve the problem. The caregivers must teach many learning and developmental skills, and that task requires much of their time. How then can we educate preschool caregivers whose time demands are overex­tended, and how can we provide them with nutrition-related activities that are appro­priate for preschoolers and easily incorpo­rated into a preschool day?

We developed and tested a nutrition edu­cation curriculum to be used by preschool caregivers. Our purposes in developing this curriculum were: I) to give preschool caregivers a basic nutrition background through a programmed self-instructional unit, 2) to incorporate nutrition education into existing parts of a typical preschool day, and 3) to provide learning activities designed to help preschool children relate food and nutrients to health.

DEVELOPMENT OF MATERIALS

We designed the basic self-instructional unit on nutrition to provide caregivers in­formation on nutrients necessary for life, on food sources of these nutrients, and on their relationship to energy balance, with

IPresent address: Human Nutrition Program, School of Public Health, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

4 JOURNAL OF NUTRITION EDUCATION

emphasis on the nutritional needs of pre­school children. The unit for the caregivers included a pretest, posttest, and post-eval­uation form. During the spring of 1980, we tested a self-instructional unit in a pilot study at seven centers. Based on caregiver posttest results and critiques, we revised the unit extensively and used a programmed learning approach.

We designed a curriculum guide to aid caregivers in providing nutrition education for preschool children. With the help of a panel of early-childhood educators, child development specialists, and nutrition consultants, we developed the concepts of nutrition upon which we based the guide. A principal source of information was the 1969 White House Panel of Nutrition Teaching in Elementary and High Schools (3). In preparing material and activities to be included in the guide, we used primarily the following three concepts thought to be appropriate for children ages two through five:

A. Nutrients are found inside of food. B. Nutrients have special jobs in the

body. C. After food has been eaten, nutrients

can do their special jobs in the body.

While we were developing the nutrition concepts, we gathered from various sources in the United States both curriculum and teaching materials, which subsequently we evaluated for the resource section of the guide. The resources gathered also provided prototypes for developing and adopting learning activities. To develop the activities that would teach the nutrition concepts, we surveyed centers in our area to determine the format of a typical preschool day and the extent to which nutrition activities cur­rently were emphasized. The survey revealed that nutrition-related activities could be in­corporated into five components of the preschool day: group time, art, outside play, lunch-snack, and self-selected activi­ties.

The completed curriculum guide is a three-ring notebook containing dividers for easy reference to the following sec-

tions: an introduction, three chapters con­taining 35 nutrition-related activities, sam­ple newsletters that teachers may distribute to stimulate parental awareness, and a re­source section with a list of reference mate­rials and with an appendix of supplemen­tary materials for use with the children. The nutrition-related activities are orga­nized by concept, based upon behavioral objectives, and designed to fit into five areas of a preschool day (group time, art, outside play, lunch-snack, and self-selected activities). Caregivers can teach the ac­tivities in a six-week unit or throughout the school year.

To facilitate teaching the relationship between food and nutrients (concepts A and B), we developed a set of six cloth models representing one food source for each of six nutrients (Figure 1). Each food model has a pocket containing a finger puppet on which is a symbol designed to portray one of the nutrients and one of its functions in the body. A group of nutri­tion specialists previously had considered the nutrient needs of the preschool child and agreed on which six nutrients, along with their basic functions, to use. Other supplementary materials introduce one ad­ditional food source for each nutrient and include pictorial recipe cards substituting nutrient symbols for the food, nutrient food riddles, simple songs, and a color­coded board game (Note 1).

CAREGIVERS EVALUATE THE CURRICULUM

To determine how preschool caregivers viewed the curriculum, we conducted a pilot test of it in 7 preschools for four weeks and then revised it extensively. Thereafter, we selected 16 preschool centers and asked 48 caregivers to evaluate the curriculum materials for six weeks. The 16 preschools were three types: half-day preschools; full­day, day care homes; and full-day, day care centers. The evaluation required caregivers to complete the basic self-instructional unit on nutrition, to attend a six-hour training workshop, and to use eight activities per week from the curriculum guide.

VOLUME 15 NUMBER 1 1983

Nutrient Symboi1 Function Food Source and Model

Protein Helps build muscles Chicken leg

Vitamin A Helps keep throat healthy Whole carrot

Vitamin B-1 Unlocks food energy Slice of whole wheat bread

Vitamin C Helps heal cuts Whole strawberry

Calcium Helps build strong teeth Y2 pint of milk

Iron Helps build strong blood

Box of raisin bran

1Copyright 1960, Department of Foods and Nutrition, Kansas State University. With permission .

Figure 1 Nutrients, puppet symbols, nutrient functions, and representative foods

Thirty-two caregivers completed the basic self-instructional unit on nutrition. All 32 caregivers preferred acquiring the background nutrition knowlege through the self-instructional unit and the training workshop rather than through a lecture for­mat. All 32 caregivers believed they in­creased their nutritional knowledge effec­tively and acceptably by using the self­instructional unit. Twenty-six of the caregivers stated the unit would help them teach nutrition.

After six weeks of using the curriculum, at a final evaluation session 20 caregivers representing all 16 centers critiqued the overall curriculum and recommended revi­sions. They discussed each activity, indi­cated whether the directions and materials were clear and complete, and rated the chil­dren's responses to the activity. Using the caregivers' recommendations, we revised the color-coded board game.

EFFECTNENESS OF THE CURRICULUM

The caregivers were very positive about a curriculum organized to parallel the pre-

VOLUME 15 NUMBER 1 1983

school format and commented specifically on its ease of use and on the variety of ac­tivities that stimulated children's interest in nutrition. The caregivers believed the major benefits of the curriculum were their own increase in nutrition knowledge and the en­thusiastic response by the children and their parents to the nutrition-related activities. Caregivers indicated the children readily participated in the activities, especially the group-time action stories and songs and the self-selected activities involving food. Several caregivers said the curriculum pro­vided them with the knowledge and self­confidence necessary to incorporate nutri­tion education into the regular day care schedule. In their final evaluation of the curriculum, all the caregivers highly recom­mended the curriculum guide and supple­mentary materials for other preschools and expressed their intentions to use the curric­ulum as a unit each year.

We pretested and posttested the children who received the instruction in the 16 centers, although we conducted no con­trolled study of the curriculum's effect. Over pretest scores, posttest scores increas-

ed 41 percentage points for knowledge of food sources and 45 percentage points for knowledge of nutrient functions. The pre­schoolers retained most of this knowledge because six weeks later when we posttested again, preschoolers' gain in knowledge dropped only 2 percentage points for sources and 10 percentage points for func­tions from the original posttest scores. We also pretested and posttested the children to determine the effect of the program on food behavior. Although not at the statistically significant level, there was a trend toward increased student willingness to taste the foods emphasized in the nutrition educa-tion program.

APPLICA TIONS

This study demonstrated that early child­hood caregivers will use a nutrition curric­ulum that complements the existing pre­school-day format, is easy to use, and requires minimal basic nutrition instruction for the caregiver. Maretzki (4) emphasized the importance of developing a curriculum in which lessons were related to each other as well as to "the total educational ex­perience of the child." We believe this cur­riculum meets that goal with concepts building upon each other and nutrition ac­tivities integrated into all parts of the preschool day. 0

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was funded through a Nutrition Education and Training Program grant from Kansas State Department of Education . We thank Donna Weber for her assistance and Diane Klein for her advice. This paper is Con­tribution No. 82-135-j, Departments of Foods and Nutrition and Statistics, Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station, Manhal\an, Kansas 66506.

NOTES

Further information about the curriculum may be obtained from Eunice Bassler, Department of Foods and Nutrition, Justin Hall, Kansas State Univeristy, Manhattan, Kansas 66506. On page 21 of this issue of the Journal are descrip­tions with photographs of the cloth food models, finger puppets, and board game.

LITERATURE CITED

I Gifft, H., M. Washbon, and G. Harrison, Nurrition, behavior and change. Englewood Cliffs, N.J . : Prentice-Hall, 1972, pp. 350-51.

2 Jennings, C. Children in the United States. Family Economics Review, Winter, 1979, pp. 17- 21.

3 U.S . White House. White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health: Final report. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1969, pp. 150-51.

4 Maretzki, A. N. A perspective on nutrition education and training. Journal of Nutrition Education 11:176-80, 1979.

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