The Best Time to Offer Your Preschooler New Foods

The Best Time to Offer Your Preschooler New Foods

January 20th, 2011 by admin  |  No Comments

Getting a preschooler to try new foods can be difficult. By the preschool years, your child has developed his personal taste and preferences for certain foods, and will be resistant to trying new things. The best way to make your child more likely to try new foods is to present them often, so that trying new things becomes common. To increase your chances of success, be sure to choose the right time to offer a new food. Your child’s likelihood of eating something new depends on a number of factors, and timing is an important one!

Hungry, But Not Too Hungry

It seems logical to think that a hungry kid is more likely to give something new a try; and overall, it’s an accurate assumption. But beware of serving new foods to a kid who is too hungry. If your ravenous little one comes to the table and sees something he doesn’t recognize it could cause more meltdown than compliance.

Try offering new foods when your child is hungry but not really starving. A kid who just needs to eat something doesn’t want to encounter a food he has to think about. You do want him hungry enough to be willing to eat what’s in front of him, however, and this can be a fine balance. Don’t try new foods if dinner is late to the table or you have been really busy or rushed that day. Aim for days when the schedule is more relaxed, and the new food is served on time.

Too Tired, Too Cranky

Gauge your child’s mood before deciding whether it’s a good time for a new experience. A tired or cranky child is unlikely to eat a new food. If she missed her nap that day, or woke up unusually early, it might not be a good day. Try to avoid days where her routine has been disrupted by unusual activities such as a visit to the doctor’s office. Disruptions to the daily schedule can make your little one cranky and unwilling to cooperate with yet another new experience.

Don’t offer new foods when your child isn’t feeling well. She probably won’t be in the mood to try, and especially if her little tummy isn’t quite right, it isn’t a great idea to put something new into it.

The Best Time of Day

Is your preschooler a morning person? Or more chipper around dinner? Look for the time of day when she is most open, happy, and compliant to introduce new foods. If your child often wakes up happy, try to introduce new foods at breakfast. If she is decidedly not a morning person, it’s better to keep breakfast a little more routine.

Dinner is often a good time to introduce new foods because it is the meal where a family is most likely to sit down and eat together. This means that your preschooler will have the opportunity to see her parents and siblings giving the new fare a try, which will encourage her to do the same.

A child who is in a good mood, well rested, and hungry but not ravenous is a child more likely to give something new a shot. Serve up new foods at the best time of day and with the best timing during the week for your child; this will be individual to each preschooler, so don’t worry about what other parents are doing. Pick the time that works best for your child.

Proper Portions for Preschoolers

Proper Portions for Preschoolers

October 15th, 2010 by admin  |  No Comments

One of the biggest problems most of us have with developing healthy eating habits is that we have no idea of what a proper portion size should look like. Accustomed to the huge portions served by restaurants, we have all developed a skewed view of how much food we should be eating on a daily basis. This problem often carries over into how we feed our children. Many kids are eating much larger portions than they should be of certain foods, while other foods aren’t served in large enough portions or at all.

Learning the proper portion sizes for your preschooler will help you to keep her healthy and avoid obesity. This applies to beverages as well as food; in fact, beverages are a common culprit for super-sized portions.

How Much Should a Preschooler be Drinking?

The two main beverages, aside from water, that the average preschooler drinks are milk and juice. While these may both sounds like healthy choices, too much of either one isn’t good for a little body.

It may surprise you to know that a preschooler only requires two cups – that’s sixteen ounces – of milk in a day. If you serve it in an 8 oz cup, that means only two servings a day. Too much milk can fill your child up, causing them to miss out on nutritious foods, and can also lead to anemia. If your child likes milk more often, offer a smaller serving size of 4-6 ounces so that she can have 3-4 servings in a day.

A serving of juice for a preschooler should be no larger than 6 ounces, and juice should only be served once a day. Serve only 100% juice, and avoid juice drinks that are full of sugar. There is no appropriate serving size for sugary drinks like soda, and your child should avoid them as much as possible,

Portion Sizes for Food

Remember that your preschooler doesn’t have a very big stomach, and doesn’t need portions the same size as you might consume. Realistic portion sizes for young children are much smaller than many parents believe.

To get the recommended 5 servings a day of fruits and vegetables, serve about ¼ cup of cooked or raw veggies, or ½ of a whole fruit. For canned fruits, a serving size is similar to cooked vegetables at about ¼ of a cup. That serving of juice does count as a portion of fruit, but it should only be one of the servings each day.

A proper portion size for a serving of protein is about 1 ounce of cooked lean meat, 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, or ½ cup of cooked beans. When it comes to dairy products, a portion includes about ½ cup of milk, ½ cup of yogurt, or ¾ ounce of cheese. Finally, a proper portion of grains for a preschooler is ½ slice of bread, ¼ cup of cooked cereal, rice or pasta, or about 4 crackers.

If you want your preschooler to be able to eat everything on his plate, make sure you are serving him portion sizes he can handle. The most commonly over-sized foods are meats and grains, so as a general rule try to make sure the vegetables take up more room on the plate than foods like pasta or rice. If need be, measure the portion sizes until you get better at eyeing how much is enough – and how much is too much.

Healthy Bag Lunches for Preschoolers

Healthy Bag Lunches for Preschoolers

October 11th, 2010 by admin  |  No Comments

The best way to make sure your preschooler is getting a healthy, balanced lunch is to pack a homemade bag lunch. For busy moms on the go, it can be difficult to come up with fast and nutritious foods to fill a lunchbox or brown bag every day, but it can be done if you just plan ahead! Pack your child’s lunch the night before, and have it ready to go for morning. It will be one less thing off your to-do list during the morning craze.

Looking for some great ideas for a healthy lunch? Try some of these quick, nutritious options that will keep your preschooler full of energy and on a healthy eating track.

Sandwiches Reinvented

The sandwich standards can get a little repetitive, and aren’t always the healthiest either. But don’t toss sandwiches out – they are a convenient lunch than can easily be packed with delicious and nutritious fillings.

A good sandwich starts with good bread. Ditch the white bread and choose a whole grain option instead. If your child hasn’t had whole grain bread before, start with a smoother option that doesn’t contain whole seeds or pieces of grain. The fresher the better – unless you are toasting the bread, which won’t work well for a sandwich that isn’t being eaten right away, soft fresh bread is best. As an alternative, try a tortilla or pita to fill instead of using slices of bread. It will break up the monotony and come along with some fun new filling ideas.

A little tired of the old peanut butter and jam routine? Take a cue from Elvis and swap the jam for slices of banana. Toss them in a little lemon juice first to prevent browning, and then layer thin slices in between peanut butter coated bread. Or mix things up even more by trying almond butter as an alternative. Check with your child’s preschool before sending any nut-based food, however, as some have bans due to allergies.

Most kids like ham & cheese – but not every day. Offer different types of cheese and deli meats for new tastes. Don’t forget fresh lettuce and tomatoes, but package them separately to avoid sogginess. Nobody likes a soggy sandwich!

Quick and Healthy Sides

Fruits and vegetables make a perfect addition to your preschooler’s lunch. Whole or sliced apples, berries and bananas are all great choices. Add a yogurt dip to make them extra fun and tasty. Chopped fresh veggies with a little ranch for dipping are also a perfect choice. Throw in an applesauce cup if you don’t have time for cutting up fresh fruit.

Another great choice to add to the sandwich is a little baggie of trail mix made at home. Mix together raisins and other dried fruit with nuts (again, check regulations) and whole grain dry cereals for a crunchy treat that is full of great nutrition. Make up a big batch and keep servings ready to go.

Healthy Drinks

When packing a beverage for your child, it’s ok to choose a juice box – just make sure your selection is 100% juice, and choose the smaller juice boxes that are intended for younger kids, so that they avoid drinking too much. A preschooler should stay under 6 ounces of a juice for the day, so one juice box will probably be it.

To make a fun drink that doesn’t have as much sugar, mix a little fruit juice with sparkling water in a bottle with a tightly fitting lid. It’s a perfect alternative to soda and prevents your child from overloading on juice.

A healthy, delicious bag lunch is not too hard to achieve. In fact, making these great lunches for your preschooler might inspire you to bring your own lunch to work too!

What Children Learn Through Play

What Children Learn Through Play

April 23rd, 2010 by admin  |  No Comments

Playtime isn’t just fun and games. It is the most important tool children have for learning. From the infant years where babies learn simple concepts like cause and effect, through childhood, where play encourages learning of social skills and more, a child at play is a child developing.

Infants: Learning about the World

The earliest forms of play in infancy are the ways in which a baby discovers what is in his world, how it works, and how he fits into it. Through play a baby learns about cause and effect; how he can have an impact on objects and people, and how to elicit responses in different ways. He learns how to move his body, improve his motor skills, and make his way through the world. Play encourages an understanding of spatial awareness, object permanence, differences between objects and more.

Through play, an infant is also learning how to use his voice, how to communicate his needs and desires, and creating the building blocks of language. Games involving a lot of interaction with mom and dad are vital to this learning process.

Toddlers: Independence and Personality

Entering the toddler years, play is an avenue for a child to develop a sense of who he is as a person, and what his role is in the family. Play encourages your toddler to test his independence while learning – and then pushing past – his limitations. Toddlers begin to build a foundation for social skills and also develop imagination, both of which are important to future endeavors. As independence blossoms, your toddler will learn to play by himself and to solve his own problems

Your toddler is also swiftly adding to a wider knowledge base about the world, as he learns colors, numbers, sizes and even more abstract concepts like feelings. Vocabulary is expanding at an incredible rate as he learns the labels for more and more things and can relate experiences to each other. All of these things are learned through play, which becomes more imaginative and involving during these years.

Preschoolers: Social Skills and Problem Solving

As your preschooler begins to interact more and more with her peers, the play they engage in together will teach her vital social skills. Your preschooler is learning to share, and to think about other people’s needs. She is learning how to cooperate with other children, through negotiation, compromise and exploring options. She is learning patience, taking turns, and how to deal with delayed gratification. Play with others also teaches preschoolers about empathy; she is learning to consider other people’s feelings, and to understand how others might feel in various situations.

Although problem solving skills begin at a very young age, in preschool they go to a whole new level. Your preschooler is working with more abstract concepts and solving problems that are not always right in front of her. In addition to teaching cooperation, working out the issues encountered while playing with others teaches problem solving. At this age, she is also practicing these skills through role-playing games which allows her to see things from a different perspective.

Throughout childhood, the most important task at hand is learning, and the number one way children do this is through play. From infancy through into school, the skills learned at playtime build upon each other to help children to make sense of their world and prepare to be citizens within it.

Rainy Day Activities for Preschoolers

Rainy Day Activities for Preschoolers

April 19th, 2010 by admin  |  No Comments

Waking up to a rainy day can really put a damper on your plans, and the thought of the hours ahead stuck in the house with your preschooler might make you want to head back to bed! But with a little creativity, you can turn a rainy day into a fun day and keep your preschooler so busy he won’t even notice he’s stuck inside.

Start the Day Off Right

Since you’re stuck inside, there’s no point in rushing through breakfast. Pull out all the stops for a delicious meal and let your preschooler in on the fun. Make pancakes and create fun faces for him using toppings like fruit, whipped cream and chocolate chips. After breakfast get everyone involved in the clean up.

Classic Rainy Day Games

When breakfast is over, there are still a lot of hours in the day to fill. A few classic games will pass the day away with fun and imagination!

An indoor scavenger hunt will keep any kid occupied and entertained. Make a list of items for him to locate throughout the house and send him off on the hunt. Since preschoolers won’t be able to read the list, you can either send him in search of one thing at a time, or try this trick; make a color coded list. Draw circles of various colors on a sheet of paper and instruct him to find an item that matches each of the colors. You’ll be amazed at the creative items he will find to complete the list!

Rainy days were made for building indoor forts. Raid the linen closet, and help to create a fortress by draping sheets over furniture. Hide inside your living room palace with some good books and a snack. Inspire imagination by dreaming up all the different places your little fort could be; a boat on the ocean, an igloo in the frozen north, or perhaps a tree house in the jungle. Make up stories about who you are and why you are in such a remote location.

Crafty Kid Pleasers

If a surprise rainy day catches you without any craft supplies in the house, never fear. These simple crafts use only common items you likely have in the house anyway.

Gather up all your broken crayons, and heat up the oven to 200 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and press various metal cookie cutters into the foil. Remove all the paper from the crayons, and fill the cookie cutters with bits and pieces of crayon in different colors, then pop them in the oven until melted. Let them cool and then pop them out of the cookie cutters. Your little one won’t be able to wait to try out her new crayons in fun shapes! You can also melt the broken pieces into muffin tins lined with foil cups for chunky new crayons that work great for little hands.

Grab that box of photos you have been meaning to go through, and some construction paper and glue. Let your little one pull out pictures of her favorite people, glue them to a piece of construction paper, and decorate the new frame however she likes (perhaps with her cool new crayons!). You can also add the person’s name and perhaps some words that describe that person – let you preschooler help decide what words she thinks are perfect.

Get creative, and before you know it, your rainy day will be at an end, with an exhausted kid who is ready to crawl into bed for a good night’s sleep!

What is your Preschooler’s Favorite Type of Play?

What is your Preschooler’s Favorite Type of Play?

April 19th, 2010 by admin  |  No Comments

In the preschool years, play becomes more sophisticated, and so does the learning process behind it. What your preschooler enjoys most at playtime can tell you a lot about what is going with his development and learning. Children at this age engage in several different types of play, and each provides a different method for a preschooler to learn about his world and how to become a part of it.

Symbolic Play

Does your little one like to pretend his building blocks are a birthday cake, or his teddy bear is a baby? He’s engaging in symbolic play. This important stage in cognitive development is allowing your preschooler to place a symbolic value on an object, which is important for his understanding of how the world works. By pretending his teddy bear is a baby and imitating the same behaviors he has seen in you and other mothers, he developing an understanding of his place in the world, and the roles of others around him.

Parallel Play

You may notice that when you get your young preschooler together with other kids, he doesn’t really play with them so much as next to them. This doesn’t mean he isn’t aware of the presence of his friends, or that he doesn’t want to play with them. This type of side-by-side play is just the beginning of social play for children. While two children may sit next to each other playing with different toys, they are learning to share space with others and also the very first rules of interaction, which they will build upon later in the preschool years.

Watch for things like imitative play, verbal communications that may seem unrelated to the play at hand (but make perfect sense in your little one’s mind) and the important first steps towards sharing. When the little girl next to him suddenly develops an interest in the toy he is playing with, he will likely be defensive of it. But this reaction is an important starting point for learning about cooperation and sharing, so as much as you can, let the kids work it out amongst themselves. You might just catch the kid who took away your son’s truck offering him another toy in return!

Imaginary Play

Is the bathtub an ocean or the couch a space ship? Does your preschooler present you with invisible cookies to eat, or talk to someone who isn’t there? She is developing her imagination, an important tool for her social development. The ability to imagine herself in the shoes of another person is the beginning of developing empathy. Imagination will also help her to begin anticipating events and guessing (correctly!) at the outcome of her behaviors.

If your child has an imaginary friend, don’t worry about it at all. This natural phase of development is a mark of a very active imagination, which research shows is a positive sign for future social interaction.

Collaborative Play

As your child head further into her preschool years, you will start to see more direct interaction with other kids during play. As she plays more with other children, she will learn all about the rules of society. This play is crucial to helping your child learn how to have successful work and personal relationships.

She is learning things such as sharing, taking turns, how to work out differences through negotiation and compromise, and how to follow social norms and rules. Collaborative play will help her to learn to keep her impulses in check and delay gratification, all things which are difficult for children, who are naturally self-centered.

Every type of play is important to preschoolers, but if your child enjoys one type more than another, don’t worry. Remember that personality plays a role as well, and your little one might be focused on one area of learning right now, but will move on soon.

How Green Things Grow: Helping Your Preschooler to Learn

How Green Things Grow: Helping Your Preschooler to Learn

April 18th, 2010 by admin  |  No Comments

Teach your preschooler to love and respect the natural world while introducing him to basics of science by spending some time learning how trees and plants grow. A great springtime activity and learning opportunity that you can pursue both indoors and out!

The Parts of a Plant

Start by sitting down with some paper and crayons and drawing pictures of plants. Ask your little one what types of plants there are, and point out some he may have missed. Explain how plants and trees are similar, no matter what their size, by pointing out the characteristics they have in common. Draw a diagram of a plant, showing all of the parts; the roots, the stem or trunk, branches, leaves and flowers.

Next break down the parts of the plant for your child, and explain what each does to help the whole to thrive.

  • Roots: draw water and nutrients up from the ground to help the plant to grow. Help children to understand this concept by comparing roots to straws through which the plant can suck up water and food.
  • Stem or trunk and branches: carry the water and food from the roots to the rest of the plant.
  • Leaves: Absorb sunlight and make food for the plant
  • Flowers: Make seeds or fruits so that new plants can grow

How Plants Grow from Seeds

When you reach the point of explaining how new seeds are created, it’s a great time to check out some seeds with your little one and plant a few together. A sunflower is a great choice because the seeds are large, they grow easily, and they will eventually produce new seeds that your little one can easily recognize, completing the cycle.

Explain how the seed needs the soil and water you pour over it to sprout those roots you discussed in your diagram, and that it will grow all of the plant parts if just given enough food, water and sunshine. Let him help you choose a sunny place to set your new plants, and give them time to grow. Every day, let him water the plant and watch for new growth.

When your little plant starts to get bigger, you can transplant it carefully to an outside garden or larger pot. This process will allow your child to see the roots and connect the plant before him with the pictures you drew. Ask him to point out all the parts of the plant from the diagram before you set your little sprout up in a new and bigger home.

How Plants Become Food

A visit to a farm or orchard is a great learning opportunity to help your preschooler understand how plants create food that we can consume. Examine various plants and see what sorts of fruits and vegetables grow from them. Pick some samples and cut them open to locate the seeds. This will help your child to connect the produce she eats with the same life cycle as the sunflower she grew.

Plant a small garden at home and let your child help to grow food for your table. Not only will she be learning about how things grow, but you’ll also find it easier to get her to eat vegetables she helped bring to life!

With simplified explanations and some hands-on learning, you can teach your preschooler all about how plants and trees grow, and have some fun along the way!