COURSE OVERVIEW:

Food matters to children and happy mealtimes can promote their physical health but also their sense of involvement with the daily routines and warm communication with adults and other children. A balanced diet for food and drink is essential for the health of babies, toddlers and children and it is also the opportunity to establish good habits for later life and protect children’s teeth. Adults carry most of the responsibility for offering and encouraging a good diet but children can be enthusiastic partners in food appreciation and preparation.

Your role as a childcare educator/ teacher is to provide good quality care to children but you can also promote their learning and sense of personal satisfaction in the skills of self-reliance. 

As a responsible adult, it is up to you to organise children’s food and drink intake so that over the days the children have a well-balanced diet. You are also responsible for helping children to develop healthy eating habits.

A well balanced diet works together with healthy physical exercise of children. Children who eat well have the energy they need to dash about as well as concentrate on their play. The enjoyable physical activity burns up the calories, as well as strengthening bone and muscles, and leaves children hungry for the next meal.

After completing this course you should be able to; plan a well-balanced diet for children and help to establish healthy eating habits, understand and support diversity in diet for children from a range of different cultural backgrounds, help children learn through mealtimes and food preparation and support children in good care of their teeth.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

By the end of this course, you will be able to understand:

• What is a well-balanced diet for children?
• Why is food important?
• How childhood is the best time to establish good eating habits in terms of what and how children eat?
• What a healthy diet is?
• How to go organic?
• Hygiene and food preparation
• How most incidents of food poisoning are caused by people breaking basic rules of kitchen hygiene and food handling?
• What to do when preparing food?
• The balanced drink and food
• Where could children gain carbohydrates from?
• The problem in unbalanced diets
• The sources of complete proteins
• Where children can get the fats they need?
• The consequences of dietary deficiencies
• What to do if you are concerned about a child’s health linked with their diet?
• Vitamin supplements and what you need to think about before giving supplements to a child?
• What to do when children are ill?
• What to do if you need to provide ‘children’s food’?
• The importance of partnership with parents
• Overweight children and the two causes of obesity
• The refusal to eat and faltering growth
• What to do when a child refuses to eat?
• How to support diversity in diet?
• The vegetarian diet and the vegan diet
• Religious beliefs and diet
• Food allergies
• Learning around food and mealtimes
• How to encourage good eating habits?
• Social skills and table manners
• Learning about healthy food and growing bodies
• Practice for physical skills
• How to abstract ideas in a meaningful context?
• Why involving children in cooking and food preparation is important?
• How to help children with tooth care?
• The development of teeth
• The ways to prevent tooth decay
• The main ways to support good dental health for children

COURSE DURATION:

The typical duration of this course is approximately 2-3 hours to complete. Your enrolment is Valid for 12 Months. Start anytime and study at your own pace.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

You must have access to a computer or any mobile device with Adobe Acrobat Reader (free PDF Viewer) installed, to complete this course.

COURSE DELIVERY:

Purchase and download course content.

ASSESSMENT:

A simple 10-question true or false quiz with Unlimited Submission Attempts.

CERTIFICATION:

Upon course completion, you will receive a customised digital “Certificate of Completion”.