The preschool learning foundations for safety, health, and nutrition are organized into three broad categories, or strands:

• Health Habits
• Safety
• Nutrition

These describe the health knowledge, skills, and behaviors that preschool children typically develop in a quality preschool environment. Through supportive communication and participation in everyday routines and activities, children begin to develop behaviors such as making food choices, engaging in physical activity, and maintaining personal safety and oral health. These skills and behaviors set young children on the path toward health and healthy lifestyle choices. The specific foundations are included later in the chapter as each strand is explored.

They represent a vision of young children’s developmental process, not an expectation. Each child enters preschool with a genetic background, developmental characteristics, an individual level of knowledge and skills, and understanding of everyday routines. The differences are based not only on the child’s age, but also on the child’s developmental level, prior experiences, and special needs. It is the responsibility of adults to help each child to develop the knowledge, skills, and behavior that promote healthy development.^[1]

Supporting Health Habits

Teachers can help children establish positive health habits. This learning is progressive, and preschool teaching often focuses on scripts and routines for prevention of disease and injury. Later, as children grow and develop knowledge and skills, they begin to believe and understand that they are responsible for their own health.

Health Habits includes basic hygiene, oral health, knowledge of wellness, and sun safety.

1.0 Basic Hygiene

2.0 Oral Health

3.0 Knowledge of Wellness

4.0 Sun Safety

Teacher-guided activities on health habits may be used to introduce or focus attention on a specific topic or concept. However, learning is primarily achieved through children’s daily routines (e.g., washing hands at certain times, brushing teeth after meals) and verbal or nonverbal scripts that illustrate the desired lifelong behavior (e.g., using tissue when blowing the nose, coughing into elbows). Children demonstrate knowledge of body parts, disease prevention, and wellness as they practice routines and develop descriptive scripts (e.g., “We wash our hands, fingers, and wrists”; “I’m going to brush my teeth and tongue”); they begin to understand more difficult concepts through scaffolding.

Teachers can support children’s development of the Health Habits foundations with the following:

• Teach children how to wash their hands.
• Practice toothbrushing skills.
• Model basic hygiene and disease prevention actions throughout the day (including issue tissue to blow nose, sneezing and coughing into their elbows, using napkins, brushing teeth, using utensils to serve foods, etc.).
• Remind children about health practices throughout the day. Include strategically placed visual reminders throughout the environment.
• Incorporate handwashing, toothbrushing, sun safety, and other health practices in the daily routine.
• Use visuals aids to demonstrate invisible germs.
• Reinforce learning with stories and music.
• Observe individual children attentively. Learn what experiences, knowledge, skills, and abilities each child has to determine where they are at in the learning process.
• Build communication and vocabulary skills. Use children’s home languages. Tell them stories and have them draw stories about health routines (such as visiting the dentist). Introduce words that apply to different topics of safety (such as protect).
• Encourage pretend play, especially to work through their fears. Provide special interest areas (doctor’s office, dentist office, eye doctor’s office, etc.) with props for role playing.
• Provide hats and look at how each might protect children from the sun. Encourage children to dramatize protecting baby dolls from the sun.
  Encourage children to explore and accept differences.
• Children recognize physical differences and the different health practices, meal setups and food choices, and safety considerations.
• Use correct terminology for body parts in both English and children’s home languages.

• Familiarize children with health helpers (lab technicians, nutritionists, dentists, eye doctors) and include others that may be utilized by their families (chiropractors, acupuncturists, midwives, etc.).
• Consider offering health screenings for children to develop familiarity with health helpers.
  Integrate health promotion and sun safety with other topics and domains.
• Provide visual representations of health helpers (ensure that you show both male and females, various ethnicities, and various ages of people).
• Enhance children’s knowledge and understanding through problem solving (whichealth helper would provide assistance for different situations.
• Model and share information each day about practices (such as applying first aid for an injury) that support health.
• Integrate sun safety with emergency preparedness and safety.
• Encourage decision making. Have children protect themselves from the sun.
• Promote sun safety everywhere, every day, all year long for each and every child.
• Ensure that children have access to appropriate sun safety items.^[2]

Supporting Safety

Preschool children deserve to live and play in safe environments. It is the adult’s responsibility to keep children safe; children should not be expected to actively protect themselves. Preschool safety education helps children develop safety awareness and the realization that they can control some aspects of their safety through certain actions.

The earlier children learn about safety, the more naturally they will develop the attitudes and respect that lead to lifelong patterns of safe behavior. Safety education involves teaching safe actions while helping children understand possible consequences of unsafe behavior.

This section on safety addresses children’s ability to follow safety rules, emergency routines, and transportation and pedestrian safety rules.

Safety

1.0 Injury Prevention

Teachers can support children’s development of the Safety foundations with the following:

• Incorporate safety activities into the daily routine.
• Involve children in creating rules. Limit the number of rules and keep them simple.
• Provide coaching and gentle reminders to help children follow safety rules. Use visuals with pictures and simple words in English and home languages.
• Promote independence while developing other skills.
• Provide time for children to practice individual skills (rather than just telling them about them).
• Introduce concepts and behaviors in simple steps. Build upon previous learning.
• Role-play safety helpers. Recognize that levels of trust with emergency and safety workers will vary from child to child based on their experiences and the environment they live in.
• Take field trips and bring in safety helpers (police officers, firefighters, crossing guards, paramedics, and others).
• Define emergency and have children practice problem solving with different emergency situations.
• Introduce safety signs. Help children learn to recognize important symbols (and their corresponding printed words).
• Incorporate music with safety songs. Children can learn to state their name and address with the help of a simple song.^[4]

Supporting Nutrition

Lifelong eating habits are shaped during a child’s early years. Teachers of young children have a special opportunity to help children establish a healthy relationship with food and lay the foundation for sound eating habits. Nutrition education and activities help set children on the path to a healthful lifestyle. Providing nutritionally balanced meals and snacks and integrating nutrition education and healthy eating habits in the home and early childhood environment can help prevent health risks such as childhood obesity.

Nutrition education is integrated with the other domains of learning. Through food and cooking activities, children also develop skills in math, science, art, language and literacy, social science, health and self-care, and social skills. Nutrition education for preschoolers fosters children’s awareness of different types of foods and promotes exploration and inquiry of food choices. Lifelong habits with foods are developed during early childhood. Through nutrition education in preschool, teachers encourage children to include a wide variety of foods that provide adequate nutrients in their daily diet.

Nutrition includes: nutrition knowledge, nutrition choices, and self-regulation of eating. Through knowledge, children become aware of different foods and tastes, some of which are familiar and others that are new. As they explore various foods and food preparations, they develop likes and dislikes and begin to make choices based on preference. Both nutrition choices and self-regulation of eating—that is, eating when hungry, chewing food thoroughly, eating slowly, and stopping when full— involve decision-making skills.

Nutrition

1.0 Nutrition Knowledge

2.0 Nutrition Choices

3.0 Self-Regulation of Eating

Teachers can support children’s development of the Nutrition foundations with the following:

• Introduce many different foods. This can be done through books, meals and snacks, and cooking activities. Include familiar and novel foods and foods from the various cultural backgrounds of the children and their families.
• Recognize and accommodate differences in eating habits and food choices. Provide explanations for differences (e.g., eating from communal dishes, feeding tubes, avoiding certain foods, etc.) by having a family member or specialist come in to explain.
• Provide opportunities and encouragement in food exploration. Encourage children to explore with all five senses.
• Integrate nutrition with the other areas of learning through cooking activities.
• Show children where food is produced. Expand nutrition education through field trips to gardens, farms, orchards, local produce markets, kitchens, restaurants, grocery stores, etc. and bring in visiting experts (e.g., farmers, food co-op members, community gardeners).
• Start a garden in which the children actively work. Allow them to plant, water, and care for the garden.
• Help children experience gardening as they raise herbs, fruits, or vegetables.
• Establish special interest areas for children to engage in dramatic play (e.g., grocery stores, restaurants, picnics, etc.).
• Encourage role playing by providing props including: place mats, tablecloths, table-setting items, pretend food items, cooking utensils, menus, and other items that represent the children’s families.
• Integrate nutrition education with basic hygiene education (e.g., washing hands before and after preparing food) and other learning areas (e.g., singing songs and discussions).
• Model and coach children’s behaviors. Each what the children are being served.
• Encourage children to share information about family meals. Explore cultural diversity and how children’s families eat at home.

• Serve snacks and meals family style. Adults and children eat together, share the same food, and talk with each other informally.
• Encourage tasting all foods, but don’t compel them to taste or eat certain foods.
• Serve foods prepared in many ways (e.g., raw, grilled, steamed, cut in shapes, shredded,).
• Combine new foods with familiar ones.
• Be aware of individual food restrictions and help children make appropriate choices.
• Offer a variety of nutritious, appetizing foods in small portions.
• Encourage children to chew their food well and eat slowly.
• Teach children to recognize signs of hunger. Encourage children to decide how much to eat and to stop when they feel full.
• Discuss how the body uses food.
• Reinforce learning throughout the day (not just at meal and snack times).^[7]

Engaging Families

Teachers can use the following strategies to help families to develop their children’s health habits:

• Provide families with concise, accurate information about ways to promote and develop good health habits in children. Information should be presented in English and home languages.
• Share written and visual safety messages with families through newsletters, brochures, and bulletin boards, web pages, and take home activities in English and home languages. Emphasize safety issues that relate to your program and community.
• Provide individualized information as well as general health information to all families. Provide safety information, especially those that involve higher risk in specific communities (e.g., water safety, gun safety, or lead poisoning). Use daily contact, workshops, and parent meetings to share information. Make sure workshops and meetings are offered at a variety of times and provide child care.
• During family conferences, find out what messages family members would like reinforced at school. Safety rules and supervision may differ at home.
• Post emergency plans on family bulletin boards and provide families a written copy of the program’s emergency plans.
• Encourage families to plan and practice emergency drills for fires, earthquakes, floods, violent encounters, or other emergency situations that might occur in their homes and communities.
• As you introduce health routines (e.g., handwashing and toothbrushing), invite family members to participate and model.
• Encourage families to contribute ideas or materials to interest areas that reflect diverse health habits at home.
• Invite family members to help children learn about people who can help in emergency situations (firefighters, paramedics, construction workers, electricians, meteorologists, cleaning businesses, etc.)
• Be sensitive and respectful of different values or beliefs, as well as varying levels of access to health products and services.
• Gather information on available and accessible health, safety, and nutrition resources in the community, including those for children with special needs, and provide this information to all families, translated into their home languages.
• Provide families with weekly or monthly menus in their home languages.
• Recognize families have the most information about their children’s food preference, serving styles, and restrictions in eating habits.
• Offer workshops and information on nutritious and economical meals based on the families’ cultural, ethnic, and personal food preferences.
• Encourage families to use available community resources for meal planning.
• Provide lists of foods or simple recipes for a variety of foods that are nutrient-dense, low fat, sodium, and sugar, and look and taste great. Include foods that reflect cultural preferences and are available locally.
• Encourage families to involve children in food preparation.
• Invite families to share their favorite family recipes.
• Invite families to visit the classroom and to sit with children during mealtimes and participate in nutrition related activities.
• Include families in planning the menu and meal-service routines.
• Provide information to all families on nutrition, child growth and development, nutrition risk factors, and community resources.
• Encourage families to ask questions and provide information about their children’s eating habits or nutritional concerns.^[10]