Nutrition education is more important than ever. To meet the needs of students and teachers across California, Dairy Council of California has newly revised Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade programs that aim to help students learn, play and grow by exploring and applying key nutrition concepts. Each grade-level program includes an easy-to-follow educator guide and student workbooks, available in both English and Spanish. These resources are available to order as a print material or to download and easily integrated into online learning platforms. 

Engage students in learning with memorable food-group characters that guide children through the lessons and provide a tangible way to identify with abstract concepts like the way nutrients support growth and development through healthy eating patterns. Lessons will help students discover how breakfast fuels their bodies, why beverage choices matter and where food comes from, while learning the food groups and exploring new foods using all of their senses. For example, students use mindfulness practices using all of their senses to taste a new food and work together to build healthy breakfast and snack ideas. 

Features of the new educator guides include:

• Fast Facts: background information to understand key nutrition concepts. 
• Brain Breaks: short, fun movement activities using minimal equipment to keep students active. 
• Principles of Social and Emotional Learning: opportunities to nurture social awareness, relationships and responsible decision-making.
• Standards Alignment: lesson-specific correlations to English Language Arts & Literacy and health standards.
• Assessments: links to digital assessments to capture students’ knowledge gains and behavior changes.     

The student workbooks also include:  

• Activity Sheets: colorful and engaging activities to teach nutrition concepts.
• Family Connection: family letters for each lesson include an interactive experience to engage parents as healthy eating role models who practice building skills with their children in the home environment. The learning and activities are meaningful, taking the students' experiences, cultures and family into account. 
  

In addition to the nutrition workbooks, the curriculum includes a Food Group Poster, Food Picture Cards with relevant food facts, short, educational videos and Pre- and Post-Assessments.
Plus, HealthyEating.org features many additional resources on healthy eating. 

Nutrition education creates a shared language and understanding around food and the food system. Through nutrition education, children learn about the wide variety of foods available to eat, how food relates to culture and their health. Relating to each other through food literacy builds relationship skills and social awareness, creating deeper connections. Nutrition education offers a fun, engaging way to explore a familiar topic in detail together.

Incorporating Nutrition Education with Distance Learning

Order or download materials from our website and incorporate into Google classroom or use for instruction via Zoom or in class. View the Tech Tutorial Guide for instructions on how to embed the different resources as needed. 

Dairy Council of California supports all learners to make balanced food choices for lifelong healthy eating. Integrate nutrition education today by visiting HealthyEating.org/Curriculum.  

References 

Core SEL competencies. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning website. https://casel.org/core-competencies. Accessed March 18, 2020.