LANA Training: Part 1 Transcription
[Slide #1 – Title]
Welcome to the LANA Preschool Program Training. My name is Kate Franken, from the
Minnesota Department of Health.
The LANA Program stands for “Learning About Nutrition through Activities.” It’s a
comprehensive preschool nutrition program and curriculum that was developed to promote fruit
and vegetable consumption. The program is intended for use in preschool programs such as
child care centers, home child care programs, Head Start and other preschool/early childhood
environments. The program is centered around environmental change that promotes fruit and
vegetable consumption with the support of the classroom and the home environment all together.
We’d like to acknowledge all of the parties involved in the development of the LANA Preschool
Program. [Slide #2] Those include the Minnesota Department of Health – Center for Health
Promotion, along with the University of Minnesota – School of Public Health, in partnership
with New Horizon Academy and Child Care Centers. We also worked together collaborating
with early childhood specialists and curriculum writers to develop the curriculum program, and a
professional graphic designer as well, to develop the materials that you’ll see throughout our
training today. We do want to acknowledge also that the project was funded by a grant from the
National Cancer Institute, and it took place from 2003 to 2007.
I’d like to go ahead and just go a little bit through the outline of the training today. [Slide #3]
We’re going to be covering an overview of the program. Then we’ll talk some about the daily
activities that are part of the program, including the food service menu changes and mealtime
interactions. Next, we’ll cover the weekly activities, which include the tasting and cooking
activities. We’ll move on to the monthly activities, which are the curriculum theme units
centering around the fruits and vegetables. Next, we’ll cover the periodic activities; those that
connect the home environment to the preschool environment with some materials and events.
And finally we’ll go through some planning and logistics for the program and how you might
move forward in beginning to implement the program in your own setting.
At the end of the training today, we hope that you will have an understanding about the
importance of F/V consumption. We want you to understand the importance of positive
mealtime interactions as well. Be prepared to offer the additional fruits and vegetables in your
setting on menus at meal and snack times. [Slide #4] Be prepared to offer the cooking and
tasting activities. Be prepared to offer the LANA curriculum units. Be prepared to offer the
family engagement activities including the materials and events at the end.
So we’ll start off by talking a bit about why eating F/V is important. [Slide #5] We know that
research shows eating F/V reduces the risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
Research has also shown that eating F/V helps promote health weight. And finally, eating F/V is
one of the most important things you can do to protect your health.
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The national 5-a-Day program which you may be familiar with, has been renamed Fruits and
Veges—More Matters. The goal of that program is to increase F/V consumption, recommending
that all Americans over the age of two consume five to nine servings of F/V every day. We
know research has shown that Americans typically only eat two to three servings of F/V a day,
so we know there’s room for growth, and that’s certainly true for children. French fries are the
most commonly eaten vegetable for many children, so we know there’s a lot of room for us to
work and help kids learn to eat more F/V and to enjoy them.
It’s important to understand what the portion sizes are for F/V. Portion sizes for young children
are not necessarily the same for adults. Here on the slide [Slide #6] are some examples of
portion sizes for young children, and adults as well. You’ll find in your handout for the training
a nice visual of some examples of portion sizes for children of different ages, beginning in
infancy, four to eight months, and up to six years and older. It’s a nice visual example of what
those portion sizes would look like. And then on the back side we have a full meal – kind of a
look at what that might be. But in general, portion sizes for F/V for adults: one medium piece of
fruit is one portion, and also a half-cup of cooked, canned or raw F/V. A half-cup is about the
size of the round part of a light bulb, if you can envision that. One cup of leafy greens, like a
salad, is one portion as well for an adult, and that’s about the size of an adult fist. Six ounces, or
three-fourths cup, of one-hundred percent fruit juice is a portion, as well as one-quarter cup of
dried fruit. And that’s about the size of an egg, if you can envision that as well. Sometimes
those visual cues are helpful for us as we’re looking at a plateful of food or choosing portions.
Now for children, as I mentioned, their portions are not necessarily the same size as for adults.
A good rule of thumb for children is to start with one tablespoon per year of age for a portion
size. One tablespoon is about the size of the tip of an adult’s thumb, as a good visual. Two
tablespoons is about the size of a ping-pong ball. And we want to remember that with onehundred percent fruit juice, four to six ounces is the maximum portion we want to offer for
children. They can easily fill up on fruit juice and sometimes not leave enough space for those
other healthy foods.
So now that we’ve established the importance of F/V consumption, I want to tell you more about
the LANA Preschool Program and how it was developed. To begin with, I’d like to introduce
Lana the Iguana. This puppet is the mascot for the program, and Lana the Iguana was chosen for
a number of different reasons. Green iguanas such as this one are vegetarian animals, and so it
was a great role model for children in terms of an animal that really loves F/V! We tested the
iguana with young kids and found it was a really fun and exciting mascot; something unusual for
the children to have in their classrooms or in their groups. Lana really provides a role model to
the children about eating F/V, so you’ll see the image of the iguana throughout the materials
today and in the materials that you have for implementing the LANA Preschool Program.
As I mentioned earlier, the LANA program stands for “Learning About Nutrition through
Activities.” [Slide #7] The goals of the program are to increase children’s exposure to a wide
variety of F/V, increase children’s consumption of F/V, and to decrease children’s pickiness and
neophobia. Neophobia is the fear of new foods, and we want to help decrease that with children.
So the program is really for children, parents and teachers in a child care setting with those goals
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in mind. The program was a collaboration, as I mentioned earlier, with the New Horizon
Academy and Child Care Centers, and the Minnesota Department of Health, along with the
University of Minnesota. We tested the program with children mainly three to five years of age,
but we also had some experience with slightly younger children and slightly older children as
well, and had success with that too. It’s really the perfect program to use and adapt to many
child care settings.
Now, I’d like to talk just a bit about how we selected the target F/V. They were listed on the
previous slide and I’ll review those with you. They were apricots, broccoli, cherry tomatoes,
kiwi, strawberries, sugar snap peas, sweet potato and sweet red pepper. These eight F/V were
targeted throughout the program in every aspect, including the menu changes and throughout the
curriculum units and other aspects. We chose to target these F/V based on the desire to
emphasize vegetables. In our experience in working with younger children of school age, we
found more success in increasing fruit consumption rather than vegetable consumption, so we
really wanted to focus on that [vegetables] to see if we could move that consumption forward as
well.
Focusing on specific F/V also allowed us to provide for multiple exposures to these new F/V in a
supportive environment. The work builds on Dr. Leanne Birch’s research that she has done in
taste acquisition with young children in more of a laboratory setting, where specific tastes were
used and children had repeated exposures to those to ultimately increase preference and increase
consumption. [Slide #8] So with the goal of expanding the variety of F/V that children eat, we
also want to build on those F/V that children currently eat well.
We used various criteria for selecting these specific F/V. [Slide #9] Those include focusing on
dark green and orange vegetables, which is an objective of Healthy People 2010. We looked at
specific nutrient content: Vitamins A, C and E, and beta carotene, lycopene, lutein and fiber. We
looked at the availability and frequency of F/V eaten and also those that are eaten well by many
children already. We had to consider the feasibility of serving these F/V in a child care setting.
We also had preference data from young children from some of our previous studies with
elementary age children in terms of what F/V are commonly liked and eaten well by children
already.
There were some F/V that scored high on the nutrient scale we developed and met many of the
other criteria, which we did not end up choosing. One example would be carrots – an orange
vegetable, very rich in the nutrients listed, but also something that’s offered fairly regularly in
child care settings and fairly well-liked by many children. We chose to focus on other, more
novel vegetables instead.
I’d like to tell you more about the study results. This study was conducted in 20 child care
centers and we were able to observe the children eating in the centers before we implemented
this comprehensive program, and afterward. Half of the centers served as controls for us, where
they just continued with their normal programming so that we were able to compare with the
children that did receive this LANA Preschool Program. [Slide #10] We found that the children
in the intervention group, compared to those in the control group, ate more vegetables at lunch,
ate more F/V at snack and ate more dietary fiber. We also found that the parents of the children
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who received the program reported a significant increase in serving of F/V at home, their
children ate more of the targeted F/V at home, the children were significantly less picky eaters,
and their children were significantly less fearful of new foods. If you’ll recall the main goals of
the program, it really was a success working with these children, not only to increase F/V
consumption, but also to expand the variety of F/V and to decrease pickiness and neophobia.
The LANA Preschool Program is an evidence-based program that was tested in the child care
setting, and is really a great program to improve nutrition and increase F/V consumption with
preschoolers.
I’m going to talk a little about the program activities and the different categories that are
involved with the program. As a visual, on the slide [Slide #11] you’ll see a pyramid. At the
bottom is a strong foundation with the main activity of menu changes daily and mealtime
interaction on a daily basis. Each step from there really builds onto that foundation. At the next
levels we have the weekly tasting and cooking activities, the monthly LANA curriculum theme
weeks, and finally the periodic family events and communication.
How can children learn to eat more F/V? They need support for eating F/V, and that includes
encouragement, reinforcement and positive interactions around food. They need opportunities to
eat F/V at lunch and snack time, and at breakfast time as well. Though we did not focus on
breakfast time in this study, it’s a wonderful opportunity again to offer those F/V. They need
modeling. They need to see others eat the F/V. That includes the adults in their life, their
caregivers, parents, peers and older siblings. The modeling piece, that children watch and see
what we do, is really important. They need to have experience with F/V, through cooking,
through books and stories, and through other avenues. We’ll go through a lot of that as we work
through the training today and the different types of activities in the LANA Program.
We want to start young – eating habits are formed in early childhood. Even by the third or fourth
grade, many of the preferences have already been formed and will carry into adulthood. We
want to help children develop the habit of eating F/V every day. Child care providers really
provide a great opportunity for children to learn this.
[end part 1]
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LANA Training: Part 2 Transcription
Daily Activities/Food Service
I’d like to focus next on the Daily Activities that are part of the program. [Slide #13]
Those include the menu and meal time interactions. So in the Food Service section of your
manual, there is a page that will look much like the slide [Slide #14] that I’ll go through next. It
has the daily food service activity goals and those are listed here.
The first goal for the daily menu changes is to serve four of the targeted fruits and vegetables
(F/V) every week at lunch or snack time. You would rotate through eight of those target F/V
every two weeks. The second goal is to serve one or more F/V at snack time every day. And
third, if children are allowed to self-serve at meal and snack times, which we really do
encourage, use age-appropriate serving utensils. They’re much easier for children to manage and
feel competent about serving themselves, and about meal time as well.
We’ve got some sample menu changes to take a look at, an example of a menu would be in a
child care setting at lunch time and snack time, and you’ll see [Slide #15] the items with the line
through them are the items that we removed from the menu and those in red [or yellow] are those
that we substituted.
At lunch time, the menu was turkey, rice with gravy, dinner roll, peas, rosy applesauce and milk.
In this case we wanted to add sweet potatoes as a targeted F/V to the menu that day. We
substituted the sweet potatoes for the peas that were already on the menu, though it’s a great idea
to continue to serve those F/V that you do serve regularly and you know the children like, but
you can also make substitutions in this way to plug those target F/V into the menu.
The other piece you’ll notice is the rice with gravy was crossed out. We wanted to make sure
that the menu was not overwhelming to the children, that there were too many food items,
because young kids can become overwhelmed with too much food. We were still able to meet
the child care and adult food program meal guidelines by removing the rice, because we have the
dinner roll on that menu as well. So whenever possible you can make substitutions and remove
extra items so that the menu is not overwhelming to the kids.
For snack time, the menu had been brownies and milk. We wanted to add a F/V and in this case
it was cherry tomatoes. So we added cherry tomatoes with a dip, because we know that
oftentimes a dip makes a F/V, particularly a vegetable, more palatable and exciting for kids to
try. So we wanted to offer that whenever we could and thought that would improve the
acceptance. We removed the brownies from the menu. We knew there was just too much
competition there, that even an adult who likes cherry tomatoes, when presented with cherry
tomatoes or a brownie, many if not most would have chosen a brownie. So we were able to
remove that from the menu, make the vegetable the focus, then we also added hard-cooked eggs.
There were a number of snacks that we added to supplement those F/V that were new to the kids.
We wanted them to still get some good nutrition during snack time, even if it was early on in the
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program and they weren’t quite ready perhaps to eat much of the new targeted F/V. So some of
those we added were hard-cooked eggs, yogurt, cottage cheese, string cheese, those high-protein
snacks that kids can fill up on and stay full through the afternoon, but that wouldn’t compete so
much with the F/V.
Another aspect I’d like to mention along with the menu changes is the serving containers that are
used for meal times with children. We found that it was really helpful to use, when possible,
serving containers that were see-through, so children could see what was being offered at meal
time, whether or not they had the chance to serve themselves. The kids are so small that once
they’re sitting down they can’t really see into the bowl to see what’s there. It’s important to take
a look at all those different aspects that complement the meal, in terms of how the F/V are
served, what serving utensils are used, etc.
Also with the menu changes, it’s important to post the menu changes and communicate that with
parents. [Slide #16] You can do that by posting a copy in your home, center or classroom, or
sending a copy home, perhaps by email or some other way, with the parents of the children in
your program. We found that most parents are very excited to learn that these F/V are being
added to their child’s menu in the child care setting.
The next point is to show patience. Children are not likely to make changes immediately to their
eating habits. Though some children will, with others it takes multiple exposures for them to be
ready to accept a new food in this way. So keep offering the new F/V. Don’t get discouraged.
Be patient. Also help the children to have positive experiences. Be a good role model yourself.
Sometimes actions speak louder than words, and kids do watch us and the things that we eat. As
a caregiver in a child care setting, you want to be open to trying the new F/V along with the kids.
Even if it’s not something that’s your favorite, go ahead and take a try and talk with them, “I
might like it this time, even if it hasn’t been something that I’ve liked that much.” That role
model piece is really very important.
We want to encourage children to take and taste the new F/V. We don’t want there to be
pressure but we do really want to encourage the kids, give them the support they need, and praise
them for tasting and trying new F/V. When kids step out of their comfort zone, it’s really helpful
if we can offer praise and encouragement at that time.
There may be a very normal transition period with children, as I mentioned, where they might
not be ready to accept those foods, and that’s OK. Stick with the program, keep offering and
stay positive.
[end part 2]
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LANA Training: Part 3 Transcription
Mealtime Interactions
[Slide #17] Next I’d like to talk about the mealtime interactions, and that’s all about
creating a supportive mealtime environment with the children. For this segment we’re
going to be watching a video that was developed called Sharing Food Tasks, by the
University of California, their extension nutrition program. It’s a video that really focuses
on the child and parent feeding relationship at home but is readily translatable into the
child care setting in terms of the roles that adults, children and caregivers have at
mealtimes.
You’ll notice on the slide [slide #18] a caption, and this is from one of our parent
materials that are provided as part of the LANA Preschool Program, this is the
beginning one, so the child is saying, “What’s that? It looks yucky! I’m not going to eat
that!” And the parent says, “Here we go again. Every time I try to get her to eat
something new, she throws a major tantrum. What can I do?” I think any of us who
have been parents or caregivers in that sort of a setting can relate to that. So I’ll go
ahead and we’ll transition to that video.
Video: Sharing Food Tasks
Child:
Parent:
Child:
Parent:
Child:
Parent:
Child:
What’s that?
It’s chicken noodle casserole.
I don’t like it, I’m not eating it.
Well, you like chicken and you like noodles and you like peas. They’re just
mixed together.
I don’t like them mixed together. I don’t want them mixed together.
How do you know you don’t like it? You haven’t even tasted it. Quit
complaining and start eating.
I won’t eat it.
Narrator: Has this ever happened at your house? You want it to be a pleasant family
meal but it turns into a big hassle, trying to get your child to eat something he says he
won’t eat. Well, you’re not alone. Every day, thousands of parents argue with their
children about eating. Parents want kids to eat healthy meals and snacks, but kids
don’t always want to. There is a solution, and we’re going to let you in on it. It’s called
Sharing Food Tasks.
Parents can use these guidelines to handle situations that come up at meals and
snacks. In Sharing Food Tasks, parents have certain jobs and so do children.
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
Parents decide:
1. What food is served for meals and snacks.
2. When meals and snacks are served.

Children also do two things. They decide:
1. How much to eat from what is served.
2. They also decide whether or not to eat.
It’s that simple, and it works! Sharing food tasks takes some of the hassles out of meals
and snack times. It helps make mealtime pleasant so families can enjoy each other.
Family mealtimes are much too important to spend fighting about food. Let’s go over
the sharing in more detail, so you can see how it works.
We’ll talk about the parent’s job first. Parents decide what food is served. This means
that parents should serve a variety of foods from each of the food groups. Use the food
pyramid as a guide.





Some choices from the grain group are cereal, tortillas, rice, bread, noodles and
crackers.
Fruits include apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, peaches, raisins, pears and
others. Fruit juices are also in this group.
There are lots of different vegetables such as carrots, string beans, potatoes,
corn, greens, peas, broccoli, bell peppers and tomatoes.
Good choices from the milk group include milk, cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt,
and food made from milk like soups and pudding.
From the meat group try chicken, turkey, beef, pork, fish, eggs, and refried or
other beans. Tofu, nuts and peanut butter are in this group too.
Parents should make sure that there’s something that a child likes at each meal. If he
wants to eat a lot of one food and less of other foods, that’s OK. Just keep offering a
variety of foods from each of the food groups. Young children are often afraid to try new
foods. This is natural for toddlers and preschoolers, but parents sometimes get
frustrated when it happens.
Think back to what happened at the beginning of this video. Mom tried to reason with
her daughter. When that didn’t work, she demanded that her daughter eat the new
food. But that didn’t work very well either, did it? Let’s go back to that scene and try it
again.
Child:
Parent:
Child:
Parent:
Child:
What’s that?
It’s chicken noodle casserole.
I don’t like it, I’m not eating it.
Well, I know that you like chicken and you like noodles and you like peas.
They’re just mixed together.
I don’t like them mixed together. I don’t want them mixed together.
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Parent:
Child:
Parent:
Child:
Parent:
Child:
Parent:
Child:
Parent:
Child:
Well, I thought you might like it. Well I know you like carrots and peaches and
cornbread, so why don’t you just start eating those. You don’t have to eat the
casserole if you don’t want to. [short pause] So how was school today?
Fine.
Did you learn anything new?
I learned how to use a computer.
Oh really, and how was that?
Fun.
Hmmm. Sure you don’t want to try any of that casserole, it’s pretty good.
[child tries a bite] It’s OK. But can I just have the other stuff?
Sure, that’s fine. Maybe next time you’ll have some casserole.
Maybe.
Narrator: What was different this time?
 Mom set a good example. She ate the casserole and enjoyed it.
 She encouraged her daughter to try the casserole, but
 Let her daughter decide whether to eat it.
Parents need to eat new foods to show their kids that it tastes good. Kids learn by
watching their parents. Demanding that a child eat a new food can make him worried
and afraid that he won’t like it. When kids are unhappy, they often start to whine and
cry. This puts everyone in a bad mood and no one enjoys the meal.
Another part of a parent’s job is deciding when meals and snacks are served. Children
have smaller stomachs than adults and need to eat more often. They usually need
three meals and at least two snacks every day. Snacks are an important part of a
child’s day. Make sure you plan snacks that fit into the food pyramid. Think of snacks
as mini-meals. Some ideas are quesadillas (cheese melted inside a tortilla), or refried
beans in a tortilla, ants on a log (peanut butter spread inside celery with some raisins
sprinkled on top), a mini-pizza (tomato sauce and shredded mozzarella cheese on a
tortilla or half an English muffin - broiled until the cheese melts), rice balls, cereal and
milk, and half a peanut butter sandwich are all favorites with children. And don’t forget
fresh fruit; orange wedges, banana circles and apple slices are all easy, inexpensive
snacks.
Parents should serve meals and snacks about the same time every day. It’s important
to have a schedule and stick to it, so kids know they can count on having regular meals
and snacks. Then there’s no reason for them to overeat. Kids should eat only at meal
and snack times. This is a time set aside for eating. Other times are set aside for
playing and doing other things.
Let’s review the parent’s role in the sharing of food tasks one more time. Parents
decide which foods are served to children. They also decide on regular meal and snack
times.
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Now let’s look at the child’s role in this sharing. The child’s role is very easy. First of all
the child decides how much to eat. Babies know just how much breast milk or formula
they need. They eat hungrily until they’re full and then they stop. Preschoolers also
know when they’re hungry, so they eat. They know when they’re full, so they stop.
Sometimes parents make the mistake of telling the child how much to eat. They tell him
that he hasn’t eaten enough or has eaten too much. This confuses the child because
he knows if he’s hungry or not. Parents should let the child decide how much to eat
even if they think he’s eating too little or too much.
At some meals children will be hungry and will eat a lot! At other meals they won’t eat
very much. This is OK. If children are served a wide variety of nutritious food and are
allowed to decide how much to eat, they will choose the right amount. Don’t encourage
him to eat more than he wants or force him to finish all the food on his plate. Sometimes this is hard for parents, because parents don’t want to waste food. Serve your
child small portions and let her ask for seconds if she wants more. A serving for a
young child is smaller than a serving for an adult. Serve your child a half a slice of
bread, a small cup of juice or milk, a little meat, or a tablespoon of rice or vegetables.
The last part of your child’s job is an important one. He should decide whether or not to
eat. If he’s not hungry and doesn’t want to eat, that’s OK, try not to worry. Skipping a
meal occasionally won’t hurt your child. If he knows that he can only eat at meal and
snack times, he’ll eat if he’s hungry. If he doesn’t eat then he has to wait for the next
meal or snack time to eat.
In summary, you the parent decide what foods are served for meals and snacks. And
you give your child meals and snacks about the same time every day. Your child
decides how much to eat from what is served, and even whether or not to eat. It may
take some time and patience to do this with your children but it’ll be worth it. Just think,
fewer hassles about food. Everyone gets to enjoy family mealtimes!
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LANA Training: Part 4 Transcription
Daily Activities
Mealtimes can be a struggle with small children, but as you saw in the video there are
some real important strategies that we can use for mealtime with young children. As
adults we know how important it is for kids to eat healthy and to eat nutritious and
balanced meals and snacks. But we know also that the children don’t always want to
eat those same nutritious foods in the same amounts that we think as adults that they
should and that’s really what this video and these strategies are all about.
It’s very normal for children to sometimes eat well at one meal, and not at the next,
perhaps not until the next day even, eat well. They might eat only part of the meal. And
it’s normal for young kids to be afraid or reluctant to try new foods. But the strategies
outlined in this video and on the slide are important to remember; that there’s really a
division in the roles for adults and children at mealtimes. [Slide #19] So parents and
caregivers are responsible for what food is served; when and where food is served.
And then the children’s responsibility is to decide how much food to eat, and whether or
not to eat from the choices that are provided by the parent or the caregiver.
Now, I’d like to go through some tips for positive mealtime interactions. In your folder
and some of your training materials there’s a handout that you can follow along with that
you might want to pull out now as I’m going through some of these tips. [Slide #20]
These tips include encouraging children through words, encouraging through behavior,
and encouraging through the environment.
In terms of encouraging kids through words, we want to encourage and praise them for
tasting new fruits and vegetables (F/V). We also want to avoid rewarding kids because
this can really backfire. [Slide #21] We need to understand the consequences of bribing
and pressuring kids. That sometimes in the short term it might get a child to eat
something or try something new or something that they don’t want to, but in the long
term what it really does is devalue that item in the eyes of the child and places more
value on what it is you’re rewarding them with. So...important to remember that.
We want to talk positively about F/V at meals and snack times. If it’s strawberry
season, talk about how the strawberries are so sweet, and they’re intensely red, or just
really talk about the F/V as a special part of the meal and bring those to the kids’
attention. You can do that when meals are served with kids by even just emphasizing
what you’re putting on the table, and beforehand perhaps looking at the menu. So just
bringing that to the attention of the children and focusing on those things.
Then, encouraging through behavior. As adults we really need to be good role models.
I know I’ve said that a few times but it really is so important. [Slide #22] We really have
a responsibility to model healthy habits for kids. They do watch what we do more than
[hear] what we say in many cases. Also, offering child-size portions; as I mentioned
earlier, large amounts of food can be really overwhelming for children, and so to offer
them small child-size portions. And involve children in the preparation of F/V to
whatever extent that you can. If they can help make selections of the F/V for a meal,
help put menus together, and then also help when you’re actually making those
preparations. There’s a lot that children can do in terms of cooking which, as long as
we make sure they’re safe and that we’re there with them, we can really get them
involved in many different ways in meal preparation. Shortly we’re going to be talking
about the cooking activities that are a big part of the LANA program. That was the goal
with those, to really get kids involved in cooking with these target F/V.
Another behavior that I’ll just mention too is even simply offering F/V first at a meal can
make an impact on children’s consumption. There was a study recently at the
University of Minnesota where they served the F/V first to kids in a Head Start setting or
child care setting, for 5-7 minutes before the rest of the meal was served, and they
found that even just that simple tactic, simple strategy, helped kids increase their F/V
consumption. So when they’re hungry and the F/V are there for them to eat…those
simple things that we can do.
And last, encouraging through the environment. [Slide #23] It’s important to offer those
F/V every day at meals and snacks, and that’s where the strategy is built in to the LANA
program, with making those menu changes on a daily basis. Giving children many
opportunities to taste F/V – not just one try but over a period of time, repeated
opportunities. And you’ll see that’s also built in to the program with menu changes and
tasting and cooking activities that will be talked about shortly. We want to create a
supportive environment for kids, for them to eat F/V, where they’re encouraged and
supported, not criticized if they don’t like something or don’t want to try, but really
supported throughout that whole process. And to the extent that you can, really
encourage children to serve themselves. We had experiences when we were first
testing the program in a child care setting, that the toddlers even could do a lot of
serving themselves at mealtime, to the surprise of many parents, given the chance.
And that really helps kids take ownership of what they choose, over how much food
they take, and they’re more likely to eat those foods if they have a part in selecting them
and serving themselves.
[Slide #19] So to review, adults are responsible for what food is served, when the food
is served, and where the food is served and offered. Children are responsible for how
much food is eaten, and whether or not they choose to eat from those foods that are
offered. Creating a calm and pleasant mealtime experience encourages children to
make good choices. Children hear what we say and see what we do, so it’s important
to be a good role model and continue to be patient and encourage kids as you offer
these new F/V.
In the periodic activities portion of the training later, we’ll be going through some of the
materials that are offered for parents to connect the experience in the child care setting
to home. One I thought I would bring to your attention is there are some brochures
called “Parents Talk About Feeding Kids.” They were developed with the same
messages and strategies in mind that were covered in the video that we watched, and
that I just went through with you for positive mealtime interactions. So that’s one way
those messages can be given to parents as well, so that they can support what you’re
doing in the child care setting with what they’re doing too to help support and encourage
the children.
The next slide [Slide #25] shows a photo from our work in the child care centers, and
we chose it to include here in the training because it really shows some great, positive
aspects to mealtime that are happening here. You’ll notice the teacher is sitting with the
children. Whenever possible it’s really important to eat with the kids and we know in
child care settings it’s a really busy time. Oftentimes you’re serving, you’re refilling, you
take on many roles. But to the extent that you can sit down and eat the same foods,
eat meals with the kids, it’s really important. And you’ll see that here in the photo. Also
the children and the caregiver are having a nice conversation together it looks like. It’s
a positive, supportive environment. One young boy is serving himself, it looks to be
seconds, of on the vegetables I think. So he’s deciding for himself, he’s using a spoon
that’s a good child-sized serving spoon. And the foods are displayed and served in
clear containers, another way for the children to see what’s available for the mealtime,
to kind of showcase the colors of F/V, and help them to be able to serve themselves
and make choices about the meal as they can.
That concludes the daily activities portion of the LANA training. Next I’d like to introduce
my colleague, Susan Bishop, and she’s going to be talking through the weekly activities
that are part of the LANA program.
LANA Training: Part 5 Transcription
Weekly Activities - Tasting
As Kate said, I’m going to go over the weekly activities and the monthly activities that
are part of the LANA program, and a little bit of logistics but then Joyce is going to follow
up and will complete that part of it.
The goal of the weekly activities is to incorporate them into the regular routine of a child
care setting. Much like a number or a letter of the week, when the fruit and vegetable
(F/V) activities are incorporated on a weekly basis, it really improves the system that
you’re working within to create a structure to support the child care environment. Each
week one of the eight targeted F/V will be featured, and during that week you’ll offer a
tasting activity and a cooking activity. [Slide #28] We’ll go over the logistics in a little bit,
but you’ll want to offer the tasting activity twice in a course of 16 weeks. But you’ll want
to continue to offer the cooking activities. What we learned during the study was that
after a while children tire of the tasting activity, but the cooking activities are really
enjoyed no matter when. They really like them and continue to enjoy the different
activities they learn about.
The purpose of the tasting activities is to provide an opportunity for the children to taste
the targeted F/V in a fun activity setting. The goal is children will gradually become
willing to try and taste new F/V even when at first they may be only willing to smell, or
taste a very small portion. We even encourage you to let the children know that if they
do want to taste it but they decide they don’t want to eat it, they’re welcome to politely
spit the food item out into a napkin. This really reduces the sense of pressure that
children sometimes experience when they’re confronted with new foods. As Kate talked
about, children can be really fearful of new foods and we really want to reduce that
neophobia and pickiness by encouraging them, and letting them decide it’s really not for
them in the moment. And again as Kate said, adults really can be great role models by
reinforcing, “Yes, I’m going to try this food. It may not be my favorite but I’m going to try
it again because maybe I’ll like it this time.”
If you’ll turn to the Tasting Section of your manual, it’s Section 4, you’ll notice that
there’s some planning information and overview of the purpose of tasting, and some
strategies for planning for how you’re going to implement this in your setting. [Slide
#30] You’ll want to purchase the product ahead of time, you’ll want to prepare the F/V
that you’ll be serving, and you’ll want to gather all the tools that you’ll need to offer the
tasting to children. You’ll also want to have the children wash their hands before they
come to be engaged in the tasting activity. And beyond all those physical preparations,
you’ll also want to have some kind of engagement occur, whether that’s using the Lana
puppet or offering some guessing games to the kids to really get them to focused on the
tasting activity. Now, Kate is going to demonstrate for you how we would conduct a
tasting activity in the classroom. So Kate, please take it away.
As Susan mentioned, it’s really important to kind of do the work ahead of time to do the
planning and preparing to make sure that you have what you need to do a tasting
activity in your child care setting. Now, here, once you’re ready, you’ll want to have the
F/V of course, that you’re going to offering for tasting. In this case we’re going to be
tasting red pepper. It’s a really good idea to think about how to introduce the F/V that
you’re tasting to the children in a fun way. Using the Lana puppet is a really nice idea
for doing that especially early on when the Lana puppet and the character is really new
to the kids – it can be real exciting. So you might want to do something like Lana can
talk with the kids, such as, “Hi guys! I love fruits and vegetables! I heard you were
having a tasting activity and I just wondered if I could join you?” “Really? OK, I’m just
going to sit at the table a little bit while you have some. And then I’d like to have some
too. Great!” So you can use Lana in whichever way you decide in your own voice to do
that. It’s a really good idea to show the children the actual F/V, whole if possible, so
that can get a sense for what it looks like. You can pass this around, let kids take a
look, feel, and just kind of experience the F/V that way. In this case I’ve cut the red
pepper in half, it’s really interesting for kids to look at the inside. You can talk about on
a F/V where the seeds are. Are they on the inside, are they on the outside? Kids can
really take a look at that. They can smell it. And you can pass this around as well. And
then when it comes time to doing the tasting activity, there are some different strategies
and ways you can do that.
To begin with, when you’re starting off with the program, one of the best ways to do a
tasting activity is to gather the children at a table, once they’re washed their hands.
Present or introduce the F/V, and then you can offer very small tasting portions to each
child. Again, the tasting activities are not to fill up a hungry child. It’s really an
experiment in just letting the kids try a little bit. So you don’t need to have very much
there, just a small portion. You could also have the red pepper strips in a container that
could be passed around with some tongs and the child could serve their self a really
small portion as well. One thing that we found was really helpful and actually was used
in some research that we looked into, just the phrase of saying to kids, “I’d really like
you to try this, and if you like it you can have some more.” So that it leaves it open for
the kids, there’s no pressure, it’s really all about experimenting and trying some different
things.
There are ways to add some excitement to the activity if you want to have one of the
children be your helper of the day and perhaps pass out the samples to their friends.
You can buy inexpensive chef hats like this at a restaurant supply store, child-size
aprons, those sorts of things that can really make it fun; allow kids to get into the role of
doing the tasting activity. Another way to involve the kids, and you’ll learn more about
this in the theme unit section of the program of the training today. This is what we call
the Taster’s Choice Chart, and it’s just a really simple table that was developed where
you can have different F/V listed at the bottom that you might be taste testing with the
children, and then each child who tries it can put a sticker there. You can even have a
math activity about comparing the number of children that tried the different F/V. So
there’s really a lot that you can do with it. It’s a great way for kids to become
accustomed to trying these new F/V and have a chance to experiment with them.
[back to Susan] There’s five key ideas we’d like you to remember about tasting
activities. [Slide #32] Number Five is to create a separate time for tasting activities.
[Slide #33] The tasting activity should be done separate from lunch or snack, and it’s
usually best to be done at the beginning of the week when you’re introducing the F/V of
the week, so that kids know what the week is going to hold for them. Most teachers like
to do the activity in the mid-morning, after breakfast but before lunchtime, so that
children are not either full from just having eaten, or too hungry.
Remember, this an opportunity for children to explore a new food, without the pressure
to eat. Even meals have an inherent sense of pressure to children, because they know
there’s an expectation they’re going to eat the food that’s in front of them. This is really
more almost like a science experiment. I really appreciate the Kate framed it so that
you can understand the strategies that you can use to try to encourage kids without
pressuring.
Number Four: Before you begin your activity, you’re going to want to build anticipation.
[Slide #34] Using the Lana puppet is a great strategy. We learned a lot from the child
care providers we worked with. They created a number of fun activities. They did
scavenger hunts, they did a guessing game with a muffin tin – items were in each of the
muffin cups that were hints, such as a green crayon for the color of broccoli or a little
tree in the container, because it looks a little like a broccoli bud. Another way to build
anticipation is to say to the kids, have the food out in the room where the kids can’t
reach it and just say, “Oh, we’re going to have that a little later.” So just building the
anticipation by having a visual cue there for them.
Number Three: Offer small amounts. Again, as adults, we have a different sense of
what an adequate portion is, but children are small physically, and really the small
portion is a good way to reduce their fear of the new item. [Slide #35] And also having
seconds available for the kids in case they do want to have more. That’s a great way to
encourage them.
Which brings us to Number Two: Encouraging without pressure. Praising kids as Kate
said is a really good strategy for helping kids feel positive about new foods. [Slide #36]
And talking positively about them yourself in all the ways Kate described. Being a good
role model is so important. Again if it’s not a food you particularly love yourself, if you
can just be honest with the kids and positive in the same tone. Encouraging kids to
serve themselves is another way to gain autonomy about their food choices, and that
also encourages them and encourages their sense of competency.
Number One: Let’s make it fun. Kids love to do dramatic play. Chef’s hats, aprons,
things like that really engages the kids, asking for table helpers, all these things really
add to the sense of fun and excitement about this activity
LANA Training: Part 6 Transcription
Weekly Activities – Cooking
On to the cooking activities. These will also be done weekly. The purpose of these is to
expand children’s exposure to food through other opportunities outside of meal time and
snack time. We all know that as children feel more competent, they’re more likely to
take more risks and try new things. So if they are cooking they’re going to have a better
sense of what the food is and be more inclined to eat it. In our pilot of this program we
had a really interesting experience that really drove home this point. There was a boy in
the preschool classroom who really did not like new foods and we were testing out the
red pepper wrap, which is a recipe within the recipes for this program. And he took all
the components of this, the teacher demonstrated the activity, and then he was rolling
up his red pepper wrap, and then he ate his red pepper wrap. And his teacher was
looking at me like, “I can’t believe this. He’s eating this. He doesn’t like new foods.”
And he asked for another one, which he made and ate. And then when they were
cleaning up the classroom getting ready for the next activity, he was still wanting more.
The teacher had her demonstration one left and she gave it to the boy. He unrolled it,
rolled it up again, and ate it. And it just really brought home to all of us, for this boy the
importance of that hands on experience with the food outside of eating it just by itself.
So we encourage you to approach these activities, with all those different styles that
children have, in mind.
The logistics of the cooking activities we’ll go through now and we want you to again,
much like the tasting activities, be prepared ahead of time. [Slide #39] You’re going to
want to plan which recipe you’re going to use, have purchased those fruits and
vegetables in advance, and make sure that the prep that you want done before you start
the activity with the children is accomplished. Again, children will want to wash their
hands before they come to do this, and you’ll want in some way to build anticipation or
engage the kids before this activity starts. In your packet, you’ll find copies of the
recipes we’re going to have Kate demonstrate in just a minute. We’re going to
demonstrate the mouse tail snack and the broccoli wrap. So look for those in your
packet and you’ll see the supplies and directions and how that’s going to be laid out for
you in the manual. Let’s see, I think we’re ready for the demonstration. Kate, can you
take over and demonstrate those two?
Kate Franken: OK, great. As Susan mentioned, like with the tasting activities, you’ll
want to be prepared, but once you are ready and want to do a cooking activity with the
children, there’s some basics in terms of just getting started. Susan mentioned
demonstrating and that’s what I’m going to do now is demonstrate on two of the cooking
activities that are two of the really popular ones that we found with the children. You’ll
also find it helpful to show the kids a picture of the recipe, the final product that they’re
going to be making. These photo cards are available as a part of the LANA program in
the materials you can print out and have available. And even in black and white it still
shows the children what they’re aiming towards in terms of what they’re making.
So the first one I’m going to demonstrate is the mouse tail snack. This was a really fun
activity for our kids and one that even the youngest of the preschool age children could
really master themselves. So on the table here, you’ll want to have enough supplies for
your group of children, whether that’s a table, however it is that you’re going to be doing
the cooking activity in your setting. Here we’ve got all the ingredients together, enough
for your whole group. So you’ve got strawberry halves, some berry cream cheese,
graham cracker halves, sunflower seeds, and then string cheese that’s been pulled
apart. So those are all the ingredients for this recipe or this cooking activity. So when
the kids are gathered and you’ve told them and introduced the activity, you’re going to
want to demonstrate that to them. So I’ll do that now.
To begin with you’ll take the half of a graham cracker, and with a plastic knife you can
take some of the cream cheese and spread that right onto the graham cracker - this
becomes the base for the mouse. We found that using berry cream cheese was really
popular with the kids, something fun and different for them that fits well with the
strawberry here. Then you’ll take the strawberry half and place that on the graham
cracker – this becomes the body of the mouse, and then next we’ll go ahead and add
the tail. As I mentioned the tails are string cheese that’s been pulled apart and you can
add that on here for the mouse and make it kind of curly, however you’d like. And then
finally the last touch on the mouse is taking sunflower seeds and we’re going to add two
right to the top here for the ears for the mouse. This is something that some of the
younger kids had a little trouble with on their own but they actually did pretty well and
they’ll let you know if they need some help. So, you want to demonstrate this, show this
to the children, and then they’re going to have a chance to make their own mouse tail.
Be there to help them, if there’s tasks they need help with during that time and just
encourage them during the activity. So, that was the mouse tail snack.
The next cooking activity that I’m going to demonstrate is what we call the broccoli
wrap. Again, a really simple recipe that’s mainly just assembly, to put together a snack
that the kids could enjoy in the child care setting, or at home, even as a part of meal
time. So you can show the picture to them – what the end product looks like, and then,
again have those supplies ready for the children, enough for your group. In this case
we’ve got small tortillas, lunchmeat—we chose turkey in this case, but you could use
ham if you’d like, or something else, some regular cream cheese to spread on, and
finally chopped broccoli, and that’s what going to go in as a last step right before you roll
it up, a nice way to add that fresh broccoli in a kind of novel way for the kids.
So, to demonstrate—you’ll take your tortilla, get some of the regular cream cheese and
you just spread that right onto the tortilla. Just kind of spread that around, the kids as
you’ll find, have all different ways of putting these together and really can have fun with
it when given the opportunity and the chance. So you’ll spread the cream cheese on
just like that and then take the slice of lunchmeat—the turkey here—and you’re going to
place that on the tortilla and leave just a little bit at the end where there’s just some
cream cheese, and that help form the glue that holds it all together. Then take about a
tablespoon of the finally chopped broccoli and just sprinkle that right onto your
lunchmeat and onto the wrap here. And then last step is you’re just going to roll that up,
so you’ll start from the end where you have the lunchmeat and you just roll it, and as I
mentioned, that cream cheese at the end holds it all together. And this can just be a
really fun snack for kids and something for them to enjoy at the child care center or at
home.
Susan Bishop: I want to point out, Kate just demonstrated two activities that children
can do on their own. But in this slide [Slide #41] you’ll see that children are working in
teams. They’re making a red pepper pizza and they’re working in teams to make this,
so I really want to point out that many of these activities can be done in a variety of
ways. Some things like making muffins you’ll have children taking turns stirring a large
bowl of batter. But we encourage you to just think through what’s going to work best in
your setting and plan ahead so that you know what you’re going to be having the
children do. OK, thanks, next slide.
[Slide #42] I want to show you some of the photographs of some of the recipes so that
you get a sense of the recipes that kids will be using as they do these cooking activities.
With the apricots we have the surprise muffin with the apricot half hidden inside.
There’s a tropical fruit salad to the right of the muffin. There’s the fruity bug with three
dried apricot halves as the body of the bug. And then there’s the pretend egg snack,
which is just a half of a bagel with a piece of provolone cheese and a half of a canned
apricot on top.
Next slide [Slide #43]. Here we have the broccoli recipes. There’s a broccoli salad, the
broccoli wrap that Kate just demonstrated, there’s broccoli lasagna—this is one we’ve
often included in training because often people don’t believe that young children can
actually make this recipe, but it’s very simple and very easy for kids to put together.
We’ve even had kids make this recipe for their entire child care setting. The last one is
the broccoli trees.
This slide [Slide #44] shows you the red pepper recipes. The red pepper wrap that I
referred to earlier, the red pepper pizza, there’s the rabbit food salad, and then red and
green pepper kabobs. Next slide [Slide #45]. Here we have the kiwi recipes. There’s
the stoplight snack, the kiwi smiles faces, and then the rainbow salad.
Some of these are related are related to some of the storybooks they have and we’ll talk
about that as we get into the theme units, but I just wanted to make sure you had an
opportunity to see these. Next slide [Slide #46].
So, as with the tasting activities, there’s five main concepts we’d like you to remember
about the cooking activities.
Number Five is to Plan Ahead [Slide #47]. Again this is something we know is really
important to be successful in delivering the cooking activities. They do require a little
preparation, so knowing what activity you’re going to do, and how you plan to implement
that with the kids is really important and it allows you prepare by shopping. In Section 5
of your manual you’ll find planning information right there at the front of the section, and
you’ll also find all of these recipes in the manual.
Number Four – to Let Kids Decide. [Slide #48] Again this means allow children to
decide how much they’re going to participate in the cooking activities, and again this
notion of whether or not they’re going to eat or how much they’re going to eat. This
really helps children feel competent with their choices around food. Again we have
another story from our study. There was a young girl in one of the centers who was just
unwilling; she was just very, very fearful. In fact any time they would start with a
cooking or tasting activity she would run away crying. The teachers really talked
through what were the best strategies, and they decided to just let the young girl be in
the classroom but not pressure her to participate in the activities at all. And within a
month, she was coming to the table and tasting new foods. So this child who had gone
from not even wanting to be anywhere near the activities had gone from that to being
willing to try new foods and participate in the cooking activities. So again it really for us
brought home the point of, even when children are very fearful, if we let them go at their
own pace, they’ll often be willing to try new things pretty willingly. Especially with all the
positive role models the girl had around her, it really helped a lot.
Number Three – to Make the Connection between the activities that are going on in the
classroom with the theme units and the cooking activities. In this slide [Slide #49] you
can see there’s the rabbit food book; well, there’s the rabbit food salad which is the
vegetable salad that kids can make in their classroom. And also the stoplight snack,
connecting that to kids with real stoplights in the streets.
Number Two – to Demonstrate. [Slide #50] Again we found this really so valuable so
that kids understand what it is they’re going to be doing, what’s going to be expected of
them. And along with demonstrating, having the photos available for them also gives
them a reminder of where they’re headed with what they’re making.
Number One – Kids as Cooks. We really encourage you to let the kids do as much of
the cooking as they are able. We know that this is going to vary depending on the
children in your classroom, the ages and a lot of other things. [Slide #51] In this slide
here you can see children are mixing a bowl full of muffin batter and taking turns. You
can see how they’re all very, very interested in what’s happening. So, we’re on to the
monthly activities.
[end part 6]
LANA Training: Part 7 Transcription
Monthly Activities – Curriculum Theme Units
Kate talked about the daily activities so to just go through a recap of things, she talked
about the daily activities of menu changes and mealtime interactions. And we just
visited the weekly activities--the things that will go on in your classroom every week.
And now we’re going to talk about the monthly activities, which are Curriculum Theme
Units. There’s six units that we have developed that focus on fruits and vegetables
(F/V), and you’ll notice as we look at these that they are not really related to F/V being
good for you. They’re fun, interesting information that really hopefully builds on the
classroom activities you’re already participating in.
We really want to be positive, and really just be enthusiastic about presenting these
things. We often don’t present things that are good for kids as enthusiastically as we do
other things. And we just really want to sell these ideas and use these monthly theme
units to do so. Next slide please [Slide #53]. So the theme units are called: Eating the
Alphabet, Vegetarian Animals, Our Senses Teach Us, Inside/Outside, Growing Things,
and Foods for Everyone. Again you can see in these titles that we’re really looking at
other aspects of F/V other than their nutritional value. We know from lots of studies that
good health isn’t really much of a motivator, especially for young children who don’t
really understand those concepts necessarily as well. We just really encourage you to
make this a fun, engaging program so that kids feel positively about F/V.
Next slide please [Slide #54] Again these theme units are offered once a month, they’re
week long curricula that cover all learning areas for child care settings. And in your
manual, Section 6, you’ll see a bunch of preparatory materials. I believe it’s on page 2,
there’s a grid of all the activities that are in the theme units for each of the theme units.
This is all designed to help you plan and understand what you’ll be offering the kids.
There’s also at the beginning of each theme unit a sample lesson plan. This lesson
plan includes most all of the activities that are there to offer. And we really don’t expect
you to do all of those activities. It’s just the activities are designed to meet children at
various age levels and we know that that may be a bit much for any one provider to try
and offer children in any one week. We do recommend however, that you do at a
minimum, the things listed on the bottom half of this slide. We’ve learned that at a base
this requires these many activities to really help children focus and concentrate on the
F/V.
Here in this slide [Slide #55] you’ll see this is the Eating the Alphabet theme unit and
some of the activities and supplies that you will want to use for this theme unit. You can
see down in the left corner there’s Lana the Iguana. Behind her there is a letter that
goes home to parents along with a small fruit basket that is to go home after the
children read the story, The Lovely Present, which is behind the fruit basket. Next to
that is the Eating the Alphabet storybook and next to that is the “Sorting Foods Tasks”
storybook. In front of the Sorting Foods… is an activity used to sort foods by color. So
there’s a number of activities here. You can again see the Taster’s Choice chart that
Kate had mentioned earlier as part of the tasting activity. And in the middle you’ll see
some F/V models that kids can use.
Next slide please [Slide #56]. These are some items from the Our Senses Teach Us
unit. You can see My Five Senses, Growing Colors, and in front of the two storybooks
there’s a mystery bag. Kids can reach in and feel and identify the F/V that’s in the
bag—either real or a food model. In front of that are some smell cylinders. They have
various strong scents in them so children can smell them and experience just
understanding food through their olfactory senses. Just behind that is the first Lana
story that is part of what our curriculum writers designed to go with this program, and it’s
a story called Lana Plays a Trick on Tenzin. In that story Lana identifies that her mom
is making some jam in the kitchen and how does she know that? Well, she can smell it,
things like that. Very fun story and really goes right with the whole program. In front of
that is a vegetable puzzle and on the left side at the front of the table is a Pin the Apricot
on the Tree game that comes with the theme unit.
Next slide please [Slide #57]. This is a Vegetarian Animals unit and this explores all the
animals that really like F/V. You can see at the back there’s a book called Lunch with a
mouse who gets into all kinds of food and at the end of the day is covered the colors of
all the F/V he’s been eating. There’s a Rabbit Food story, this again is about a family of
rabbits who are encouraging their children to eat F/V. In front of that is a diorama – this
is another activity that could take place in the classroom with a scene of where an
animal might live that eats F/V. You can see also in front of that some flowers, and the
Lana and Willie Eat Lunch story.
Next slide please [Slide #58]. This is some materials from the Inside/Outside unit.
Again the Lana story, this is In and Out with Lana and Carlos. Behind that is an apple
flip, which the cover folds down and covers up the inside of the apple but you can see
the seeds of the apple. So it’s just an art activity. To the left of that is Tops and
Bottoms, it’s a book, a very funny story about how vegetables grow in the ground and
on top of the ground. Again there’s some other food models and some games
identifying where F/V grow--on trees, plants or vines.
Next slide please [Slide #59]. This unit is called Growing Things and it’s really about
how things grow, having children plant seeds and watch them grow. You can see a
seed collage in the middle of that. There’s some gardening tools for the sensory table,
again some more storybooks, and a set of sequencing cards about how you would plant
and tend a garden. And again the Lana story, which is Lana and Alisha Plant a Picnic.
Next slide please [Slide #60]. This is the final unit and it is the culmination unit kind of
wrapping up all of the theme units and also celebrating how foods are used in different
cultures. So in this unit you can see there’s a placemat with some chopsticks on top of
it. These things can go with the activities that are done in connection with a tasting
party you might offer, where you’re tasting other sorts of F/V. You might even do
comparison tastings with the kids--some things are sweet, some are juicy, just
comparing how different foods interact. There is a Lana lotto game in the middle.
There’s also a Raffi CD there that represents some of the songs that are used within the
theme units in some of the large motor activities. The storybooks again. Oh, and then
on the lower right you’ll see the LANA cookbook. This is another thing that’s available
as part of the curriculum. It’s a cookbook of all the recipes the kids will have been
making that they can color and personalize and take home for themselves for their own
families. So from these slides you can see that there’s many program materials, some
of them depending on who you’re working with to offer this program, will be offered to
you directly and some you may [Slide #61] want to find on your own or you may already
have. There’s the program manual, the Lana the Iguana puppet, fruit and vegetable
models that many of you probably already have, the LANA stories—they will be
available to you, and other storybooks that are often available in your local library, and
then there’s parent materials. And Joyce is going to cover a lot of these things. Joyce,
it’s all yours.
[end part 7]
LANA Training: Part 8 Transcription
Periodic Activities
Hi, my name is Joyce O’Meara and I’m also at the Department of Health. I’m going to
be talking about the periodic activities that are included in the LANA curriculum, the
ones that don’t happen daily or weekly or monthly, but that you space out during the
course of implementing the LANA program in your child care program.
The LANA program provides a number of ways to engage families in the activities that
are taking place in your child care home or your center. By making this connection
between home and child care you can encourage families to provide some continuity
between home and child care that will help support the children as they try new
activities and adapt new behaviors around foods. Changing behaviors, as you know,
takes time and practice. Children have to do things a number of times sometimes
before they are interested and willing and able to do them on their own. The more often
children have the opportunity to taste new fruits and vegetables in a positive context,
the more likely they are to adopt those new behaviors. So by getting buy-in from
parents we can increase the opportunities for children to practice eating fruits and
vegetables and we can help it to become an established habit more quickly.
The LANA program offers two main ways to engage families in the program activities
that you’re doing with the children. One is the family resources and as you can see on
the slide [Slide #63] many of these are things that you’ve already heard about today.
You can see that it includes the parent letters; there’s one that goes home at the
beginning of each theme unit to clue the parents in about what their children are going
to be talking about. There’s a take-home tasting kit with the specific fruits or vegetable
that they bring home from child care and can use at home. There are Parents Talk
brochures and you saw one sample of that earlier. There are Lana stories; one for each
of the units except the very first one. And then the cookbook that you just saw attached
to the last theme unit. And as you can see on this slide there’s a chart that shows the
different items that are available and how they fit together. There are a couple of
exceptions to the fact that there’s a story and a letter and a parent brochure for each
unit. You can see those exceptions easily, they’re in a different color.
All of these strategies of sending home letters and tasting kits and storybooks and
brochures, all those things were done in the study and they were all worked well. But
they may not work as well in your site at least not without some modifications. So if
something doesn’t work out the way it’s shown in the curriculum manual, feel free to try
an alternative. Adapt it, or send it home at a different time, feel free to do that. It’s a
very flexible curriculum. For example, if you’re not able to make a parent letter for each
family, you might choose to hang one on a bulletin board in your child care program. If
you’re not able to make a copy of each Lana storybook for every family, you might have
a couple of circulating copies that parents can turns taking home to read to their
children at home.
We do encourage you sending home the tasting kit with each theme unit. There’s a bit
of an extra cost associated with buying the fruits or vegetables that you’ll send home
with the children, but we got very positive feedback about these kits and really tied
together what was happening with their children in child care and what you’re doing at
home. Now if you have any questions about the family resources that are provided you
can certainly ask the trainer.
The next way that LANA encourages continuity between home and child care is in the
special events that are built into the program. Those special events are intended to be
offered throughout the program – you choose the timing. It’s kind of logical to offer the
three, one at the beginning, one at the midpoint and one at the end. [Slide #64] But
again you’re free to rearrange these if it makes more sense for the way you are offering
the LANA program.
These events take place at your child care so they’re different from the printed materials
that you’re sending home. They actually offer an opportunity for the parents to come
and spend a little bit of time in the child care program, and also for the children to teach
their parents something which you know they always enjoy doing – being able to show
their parents something that they know and their parents don’t. They also provide an
opportunity for the parents to interact with other parents and sometimes that’s very
helpful for them when they’re talking about food and feeding issues. So again, it’s up to
you to decide when and where and how you want to offer these events. Rather than
offering them individually at your center it might work well for you to choose to offer
them together. Join with a couple of other child care programs and offer them together;
bring together just the parents that are interested. Or maybe you could find a local
setting like a public library or community center that would be willing to provide a space
and some publicity to offer a food-centered activity for families in your area. You can be
as creative as you like in getting parents involved in their children’s food experiences.
So, there’s more detail about all of these activities in the LANA preschool curriculum
manual, but I’ll go through them quickly here.
[Slide #65] The Team Tasting Challenge is a chance for children and families to
samples new foods together. So the children can show and offer tastes of the fruits and
vegetables they’ve been trying in child care. They go around whatever space there is
visiting stations and at each station they try, maybe prepare, and then try tasting a new
fruit or vegetable or a recipe that includes a fruit or a vegetable. If you don’t think it’ll
work to do this outside of child care time, you might consider asking parents to allow a
few extra minutes for this when they pick up their children at the end of the day. And
just give them a little chance to try out some fruits or vegetables before they leave for
the day, and also gives their child just a little bit of an extra snack before they leave for
home.
[Slide #66] The next special event is a Parent Workshop, and this is probably the most
ambitious of the three events. You can see that parents would come together to
discuss child feeding issues and learn about the things that you learned about in the
video. The video that you saw earlier, Making Family Mealtimes Count, is a centerpiece
of this event. It gives parents a chance to talk to each other about feeding issues they
might be having at home. Sometimes they might be hesitant to talk to you about those
issues but might be more willing to talk about them with other parents. During the pilot,
the people who were conducting the LANA pilot heard from parents a lot that they
wanted more information on feeding children, so this event was designed to help with
them that. The problem of course was that parents are busy outside of child care time
and work time; difficult for them to come back in the evening. So you can organize this
in a number of different ways, and feel free again to be creative in how you offer this
material to parents. One possibility would be for communities to organize groups to
meet at a central location, again a library or community center might work, maybe a
large child care center in your area would be willing to host a parent workshop for not
only the parents in their own program but also the family child care homes in their area.
[Slide #67] The third event that you can offer as part of the LANA program is the Family
Cooking Tour. It’s designed as a finale to be a celebration at the end of the LANA
program, but again feel free to experiment with it. Think about how it might fit best with
what you’re doing. In this event the families would come together to celebrate. It really
is a celebration of all they’ve been doing, encourages families to explore cooking and
food preparation with their children, again with the children demonstrating and teaching
their parents how they’ve been using foods. In preparation for this the children would
have decorated the covers of the cookbook that Susan pointed out in the curriculum
materials and that would go home with each family who attends the cooking tour as a
way to allow them to use some of the recipes the children have been making in their
child care program to make those recipes and eat them at home.
[end part 8]
LANA Training: Part 9
Planning and Logistics
So now we’re going to move on to Planning and Logistics [Slide #68]: offering the LANA
program in your child care program. And we know from the reaction of many child care
providers that if you look at the curriculum manual and all the materials that are
involved, it can seem really overwhelming. It’s a lot of activities, a lot of information and
people, understandably, are not even sure where to start. So I’m going to point out
some of the parts of the manual that can help you to organize the materials and decide
for yourself how you want to adapt them to suit your program and your schedule and
your particular setting.
The next slide [Slide #69], Planning Logistics, just reminds you again that some of the
activities are to be done daily, some weekly, some monthly--especially the theme units
would be done one week during each month, and then the special events that you’ll
space out during the course of the LANA program.
If you look at the next slide [Slide #70], it’s a sample program timeline. It is one of the
ways that you can organize activities that you want to offer and keep them straight for
yourself. If you look in the planning section of the manual, Section 2:Planning at a
Glance page gives you an overview of the types of things you will be keeping in mind as
you plan. So again, the daily menu changes, the weekly cooking and tasting activities,
the curriculum theme units offered monthly, and then the periodic events, the parent
resources and activities.
If you turn to Section 2 you’ll see a couple of blank worksheets. There’s a weekly
lesson plan; I don’t know how well you can see this but you’ll see it in your manual. It’s
a blank week-at-a-time plan for you to decide what activities you’re going to do; what
you’re going to do in the block area, your dramatic play area, what kinds of art
manipulative activities you’re going to do, what you’re going to do at group time each
day of the week. Just to help you sort it out ahead of time, and again, choose which
activities you will include and which ones you won’t.
Also in this section there is a sample timeline like the one you see on your slide but it is
empty; it’s blank for you to fill in. And this is for people really like to be organized and
plan ahead. You can actually plan out the entire six weeks of the LANA curriculum if
you choose to, placing on there which activities you will use and when you’re going to
offer them, so that you can look ahead a bit and see how you’re going to fit it all in. As
Susan said, there are a lot of activities here and it’s not intended that you’ll do every
one. It gives you the choice of which ones suit your children’s interest the best, which
ones fit in with the types of other activities that you’re doing in your program. It’s
deliberately flexible. For example, you could even change the order of the theme units
around if it makes sense, especially if you want to tie something in with what’s going on
in your community, or if you want to tie it to fruits or vegetables that are available
seasonally in your area, you can certainly change the order that you offer fruits and
vegetables in. Again, more activities than you can do, so choose the ones that you
want.
The LANA study was designed to be implemented in your child care program over a
period of basically six months (24 weeks). What we’re hoping is that rather than offer it
strictly week by week and at the end of 24 weeks think that you’re finished, we’d really
like you to turn this into an approach that you can use with any fruits or vegetables, or
even other healthy foods like whole grains. Use this approach, build it into the structure
of your program, offering children new foods and activities that will help them be more
familiar with those fruits and vegetables. And it can go on as long as your child care
program goes on.
The next slide [Slide #71] talks about managing the costs of doing the LANA program in
your child care. Some child care providers start out thinking this is going to be very
expensive and not sure they’re going to be able to handle the cost of it. But they told us
they had a couple strategies that really helped. Some were actually making it cost less,
some were just changing the way they thought about it. So if you’re thinking in terms of
menu changes, not all of the fruits and vegetables that you will be serving will be an
additional cost. Sometimes you’ll be substituting fruits and vegetables for ones that you
would have normally served. So maybe you would serve kiwi instead of apple for a
snack or a lunch. Again, not all the costs are additional. Some are just replacing fruits
and vegetables for other foods. The other thing is to realize that LANA is a curriculum.
These are activities, not just food. The foods are not really intended to fill children up
the way snacks and lunches are. So if you start thinking of the costs involved in buying
the fruits and vegetables for the LANA activities as a curriculum cost, or a classroom
equipment cost, a lot of providers told us that really helped them to make sense of the
costs and really feel like they’re justified. One of the providers we talked to actually
compared the cost of providing the fruits and vegetables and other foods to do the
tasting and cooking activities for a certain period of time to the cost of buying one
Fisher-Price toy that would be part of her classroom materials and decided that it was a
really worthwhile tradeoff.
So to wrap up, there is a program evaluation sheet in your handout folder. [Slide #72]
We’d like you to make sure you fill that out and give it to the trainers that are helping
you with this training. The person who’s leading your training can also tell you more
about plans for evaluation of the LANA program as you implement it in your program,
especially if you’re working with a SHIP grant, you’ll need to be measuring
environmental and policy changes in your child care program as well as changes in the
children’s eating behaviors after implementing LANA. If you’re implementing LANA on
your own, you can decide for yourself how much you’d like to track the changes in what
your children are eating.
If you have any questions [Slide #73] this would be the time to talk to the people who
are leading your training. To wrap up I just want to say thank you for attending this
training, and we hope you’re excited about LANA and feel ready to implement it in your
child care program. On the slide you can see there is a site where much of the LANA
curriculum is actually available online at this point on the Minnesota Department of
Health web site. Many of the activities and tasting and cooking activities, storybooks,
family brochures, can all be downloaded and printed from the web site if you don’t have
access to those through the group or organization that is sponsoring the training for you.
And if you do have questions you’re welcome to email us at the email address that’s on
your screen [Slide #74].
Thank you again and have fun with LANA!
[end part 9]