Monthly Archives: August 2011

Friday’s Tattler

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Winners on Friday:

Milk Awards;
Angelic
Annie
Bryleigh
Connor D
Connor h
Crishawn
De Asia
Devon
Edan
Jacob
Jil
Kinsley
Lincoln
Logan
Sophy
Kayla
Food Awards:
Angelic
Annie
Bryleigh
Connor D
Connor H
Devon
Edan
Jacob
Lincoln
Logan
August
Manners Award
Connor D
Devon
Edan
August
New Foods Awards
Connor D
Angelic
Keira
Devon
Kayla
Ely
Helen
Kinsley
Knowledge Bee
Josiah
Ely
Kayla
Jill
Devon
Congratulations to all our wonderful achievers. So pleased!

Working With Families by Judy Lyden

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We, at the Garden School, hear a lot about schools, day cares and children’s groups who refuse to work with parents; who won’t give the parent the benefit of the doubt; who literally scorn parents who are trying but may be misguided about childcare. And that’s a shame because it really does take more than two parents to shape a life. Yes, the parents are the primary educators of the child, and yes the parents ultimately will be the primary influence on the child, but every time a child moves out of his own home into the world, he will learn, and that learning should come from unbiased and caring adults.

It is a privilege to work with other people’s children. It is a privilege to be chosen over other places, other teachers, and other providers who do similar work, and that’s how teachers and early childhood care providers should think about their clients.
Young mothers are just that – first timers – inexperienced – sometimes lost and sometimes unsure of what they are supposed to do about any number of situations. That’s where experienced teachers, providers and care givers can lend an ear, and idea and a warm smile.
It’s not easy. Let’s face it. It’s not easy to let 27 pounds of mean rule your life. When chaos strikes, that’s the time for help. Offering help takes the right angle, the right words, and the right set of values. Experienced providers and teachers are supposed to have those values, and need to put their words into play for the sake of the children they serve. It’s not always easy.
One child I know is an ungodly selfish little merchant of meanness. Nothing satisfies this one. There is always something wrong, the child is always ill or feigning illness when the child does not want to comply. Tears, sulk, tantrums, temper, fibs, all take their place in this overriding desire to dominate the parent, the teacher, the adult at hand.
Mom is completely lost. She hasn’t a clue how to handle this child, so the suggestions give way to counseling, doctors, medication…and guess what? None of it works, and none of it works for a reason…apples don’t fall far from the tree. The child is just like the parent, and the parent hasn’t examined her own life with any real critique, so the example of selfishness is like a candy store with the door open.
Working with a parent like this is tough because no matter what you say or how you say it, change is not going to happen. The parent will continue to be selfish and ditto the child. Being straight forward with the parent and telling her directly that the child spends too much time focusing inward and not enough time focusing on the world will never sink in, but it’s the most honest thing you can say and do, and the teacher or care provider should never give up because that’s her job. Smile and remind this kind of parent that the child needs to focus on someone besides self.
When working with children is a matter physical elements of clothing, cleanliness, health, providers often cringe from telling a parent that a child’s underwear needs to be changed every day and that the child, especially girls, need a bath daily. Dirty hair, dirty clothes, dirty child syndrome takes a strong provider with a lot of patience and a lot of moxie to convince a parent that no matter what, children need to be clean every day – for the child’s sake. This is where providers can put their foot down.
“Your child needs to have a bath every day.”
“I don’t believe in daily baths,” says the pugnacious parent.
“When the other children don’t want to sit next to your child because the child smells, it’s not fair to the child. Think of the stigma of being dismissed because you’re unpleasant to sit near. The other children won’t be able to voice an opinion now, but they will, and the only one who is going to suffer is your child because you’ll be at work.”
“Well, I don’t think my child is dirty. It’s a matter of opinion.”
“But everyone else does think your child is dirty, and you need to do something about it today.”
It’s tough, but it needs to be said – for the sake of the child who needs to understand that body dirt should not be a fixture. Course, matted, uncombable hair is disgraceful and will only end up hurting the innocent child.
Ill children who come to school and day care are also a problem that needs to be handled right away. Epidemics start in schools and day cares because nobody paid attention to the kid with the 104. How is that possible? In anyone’s morning routine, parents should routinely look at their children, speak with their children, and probably touch their children every morning. This touching, looking and speaking will usually discover that a child has awakened to an illness.
Calling a parent after breakfast to say that a child is running a 104 fever, has vomited most of what he or she has eaten for the last five weeks onto the table, floor, bathroom, hallway, classroom, and just about every crevice in the school is never a fun occasion. This is where an experienced teacher or parent takes the parent aside and reminds them that it is cold and flu season – all twelve months are cold and flu season – and it is always wise to hug, look and talk with your child every morning. That the child must be sent home and because he came to school ill, will be obliged to remain at home at least forty-eight hours.
Working with parents to help children read, write, and do simple mathematics is also a part of the teaching job. Sending home extra work for the children who don’t achieve right away is important, takes thought and extra work. It means talking to a parent about exactly what the child can and can’t do well, and focusing on fixing it. It means communication all the time, but not a very long time, it means for the next month, the teacher has to be the go getter about fixing the problem. If the parent cooperates, mostly, the problem will be resolved within a month’s time.
Working with parents does not mean giving into delinquent behavior from either the child or the parent. It means telling a parent what they don’t want to hear and then actually doing something to solve the problem, but being positive about it. Often it takes the parent to solve the problem and good experienced teachers and providers should not weaken when the problem is not solved. Taking parents to task for the sake of their child is the best parent teacher communication there is.

Wacky but Wonderful Wednesday from Food Navigator USA

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Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most caloric of them all?

Post a commentBy Elaine Watson, 20-Jul-2011

Comment: Well here it is guys.

Related topics: Trans- and saturated fats, The obesity problem, Sodium reduction, Market

Calorie labeling, healthier options and reformulation work notwithstanding, some of America’s biggest restaurant chains are still selling products so eye-wateringly caloric that diners eating just one course are getting all the calories they need for the entire day.

Super Size Me...

Super Size Me…

In its Xtreme Eating awards, a nutritional ‘hall of shame’ published in its latest Nutrition Action newsletter, health advocacy group the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) singles out eight products from The Cheesecake Factory, Applebee’s, IHOP and other well-known brands as examples of caloric excess.

Given that adults should limit themselves to about 2,000-2,500 calories, 20g of saturated fat, and 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day, diners at these restaurants had to exercise tremendous discipline to avoid exceeding their daily fat, sugar and sodium requirements in a single sitting, said CSPI nutrition director Bonnie Liebman.

“It’s as if the restaurants were targeting the remaining one out of three Americans who are still normal weight in order to boost their risk of obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, and cancer.”

Lower calorie options are available

Many of these chains did offer healthier options acknowledged CSPI co-founder Michael Jacobson.

IHOP, for example, includes SIMPLE & FIT options with a maximum of 600 calories; Applebee’s has a small number of items at 550 kcals or fewer; Denny’s has recently introduced its Fit Fare range and The Cheesecake Factory has a large menu containing several lower calorie salads and entrees.

However, their standard fare was far too caloric, said Jacobson.

“Instead of setting aside a few menu items called something like ‘Lean & Fit,’ why can’t menus have a small section called ‘Fatten Up!’ and keep the rest of the menu healthy?”

Products singled out by the CSPI include:

Denny’s Fried Cheese Melt(four fried mozzarella sticks and melted cheese grilled between two slices of sourdough bread with a side of French fries and marinara sauce).

  • Calories: 1,260
  • Saturated fat: 21g
  • Sodium: 3,010 mg

The Cheesecake Factory Farmhouse Cheeseburger(burger topped with grilled smoked pork belly cheddar cheese, onions, lettuce, tomato, mayo and a fried egg).

  • Calories: 1,530 (or 1,900kcal if accompanied by fries)
  • Saturated fat: 36g
  • Sodium: 3,210 mg

IHOP Bacon ’N Beef Cheeseburger (two patties with American and Provolone cheese on a Romano-Parmesan bun).

  • Calories: 1,250 (add another 620kcal for onion rings, 300kcal for seasoned fries or 80kcal for fresh fruit)
  • Saturated fat: 42g
  • Sodium: 1,590 mg

Cold Stone Creamery PB&C Shake(24-oz shake of peanut butter, chocolate ice cream, and milk).

  • Calories: 2,010
  • Saturated fat: 68g

Applebee’s Provolone-Stuffed Meatballs With Fettuccine (meatballs, fettuccine with marinara sauce and Parmesan cream sauce and a piece of garlic bread).

  • Calories: 1,520
  • Saturated fat: 43g
  • Sodium: 3,700mg

The Cheesecake Factory Ultimate Red Velvet Cake Cheesecake (slice of red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and whipped cream).

  • Calories: 1,540
  • Saturated fat: 59g

The Steakhouse (Morton’s) Porterhouse Steak and mash (prime beef steak and mashed potatoes).

  • Calories: 1,390 for the steak; 850 for the mash
  • Saturated fat: 36g for the steak, 34g for the mash
  • Sodium: 1,200mg for the steak, 1,300mg for the mash

Great Steak extra large King Fries (fries topped with cheese, bacon, and sour cream).

  • Calories: 1,500
  • Saturated fat: 33g
  • Sodium: 4,980mg

Tuesday’s Teacher

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From Education Week Teacher
Comment: I just love this and plan to put this to use this year in school. Excellent.

Teaching Tomorrows Skills to Today’s Students


By Heather Wolpert-Gawron

“Why do we have to do this?” Many teachers have been hearing this question more frequently in recent years. Students detect a deepening divide between “real life” and “school life,” and they have a point. As teachers, we should commit ourselves to linking instruction directly to the skills students will need in higher education and the workplace.

As I wrote my recent book, Tween Crayons and Curfews: Tips for Middle School Teachers, I researched skills that stakeholders in higher education and business claim they need to see in their future candidates. As a result, I developed a list of 13 skills that today’s students should master. The book shares strategies for helping students develop these skills.

Not long ago, I chiseled the list down to a manageable “top five” by asking fellow teachers which skills they believed were most important. Here are the skills teachers identified—along with a couple of strategies for addressing each:

Collaboration

• First, don’t assume that students know how to build consensus. It’s something many adults don’t even know how to do. Guide students through pitching their ideas to the group one at a time. Give them language to use when they don’t agree with one another. Model for them how to praise and critique. Then model the hardest thing of all: moving on.

• Shift your classroom environment to disturb the hierarchy that students tend to develop. Students will need to be able to work with diverse colleagues in the future. In middle school, that can be a challenge—in any one small group, a student’s best friend, greatest enemy, first love, most recent love, and future love may be gathered together. Stirring the pot can help: Change seat assignments and/or table groupings often. Surprise kids by rotating who sits at the head of a group of desks shoved together. Spring it on them that it’s time to look at the room from a different vantage, and you’ll find that their internal perspective can change too.

Communication

• Give students the words they will need in the future to talk to their bosses and co-workers. Talk to them about audience. You can scaffold students’ development of communication skills by providing them with sentence stems that can help them to speak with maturity. It may feel awkward at first, but it’s vital if you’re going to expect them to be able to communicate.

• Familiarize students with scenarios that will require them to communicate effectively. Show them the structure to use in a professional e-mail. Have them role-play leaving a voice-mail message or shaking hands professionally.

• Spend time involving students in developing the rules of discourse for your classroom. Ask them to help create norms for communication—then to hold one another to those norms. In my classroom, we develop norms for talking to each other, commenting on a blog, behaving during video conferences, etc. Not surprisingly, the norms for each situation are similar, leading students to deduce that manners and professionalism are universal.

Problem Solving

• Don’t answer students’ questions. As I note in my book, “Not every silence requires an immediate answer to end. It is the silence that allows for thought. Taking that a step further, by not answering the question, you have allowed possibilities to exist in student problem solving.” Be the guide who helps students to find the answers, instead of being the go-to person who has all the answers. Move your own responses from “This means … ” to “What if … ?”

Questioning

• The best way to prepare students to be able to answer the bigger questions in life is to train them to ask their own questions. Help them get to the heart of their inquiry and then celebrate questions that prove their comprehension.

• Have students develop their own assessments. Teach them how to ask high-level questions that can help assess content knowledge. Talk about the different formats of questions (closed choice, rank order, open choice, etc.), then ask them to design questions that test each other’s knowledge of the subject they are studying. Teach your students to ask deep questions and you’ll be able to assess their depth of content knowledge.

Independent Learning

• For teachers, independent learning is about letting go. It’s about permitting students to experience their own “eureka” moments. It’s also about making their brains sweat a little. For example, instead of writing my notes, comments, and questions on student essays, I meet with students individually and have them take notes using a template. We meet and talk. They identify and note the most important feedback, and we both sign off on what needs to be done. Students also set their own deadlines for revision, signing contracts that commit them to specific timelines.

• Google Advanced Search can be a great tool for independent learning. But, even as you “loosen the reins,” guide your students in using this tool effectively. Show them how to hone their searches using the file type and usage rights features. It is the first step in releasing them to be responsible and safe in their own hunt for knowledge.

Of course, as you address the “top five” skills, you can easily weave in ways to help students develop other key competencies for tomorrow’s workplace:

• Decision-making: Learn how to weigh options. Learn how to defend your selection.

• Understanding bias: Recognize agendas.

• Leadership: Develop the skills it takes to be a leader (not a ruler).

• Compromise: Find contentment even when giving something up or finding middle ground.

• Summarize: Be prepared to “get to the point” when necessary.

• Sharing the air: Learn when to be quiet so you can learn from others.

• Persuasion: Develop the ability to be convincing in conversation and writing.

• Goal Setting: Identify your goals and how to move toward them.

If you begin the year with all of these skills in mind, the content of your lessons will be more engaging, and ultimately, more applicable to life beyond school.

Heather Wolpert-Gawron teaches middle school language arts and coaches speech and debate in California’s San Gabriel Unified School District. She blogs at TweenTeacher and is a member of the Teacher Leaders Network. She is currently at work on her second book for Eye On Education Publishing and is also writing workbooks for grades 3 through 6 on project-based writing for Teacher Created Resources.

Monday’s Tattler

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Good Morning! It’s our first day of school and it’s going to be a wonderful year!

We will be doing a whole week on rules – what they are and how they change our lives!
We will be doing reading, writing and arithmetic every morning after circle time. Breakfast is at 8:30; circle time at 9:00; and classes begin promptly at 9:15. We will take a break at 11:00 for recess and come in to eat at 12:00.
After lunch, we will have a story for our listening skills. Then it’s recess again. At 1:30, we will come in from recess for music and then for a lesson on our weekly theme, then art, then the Kindergarten will do something extra and special, then we’re done.
It’s a great day and a great week.
This week’s food menus will be on our “Flower Box.” Please read it and everything that went home with you in the new paperwork.
We need the new paperwork by Friday. No paperwork, no school.
Please do not send children to school in long pants, Capris or sleeveless or long sleeve shirts. Every child needs socks and shoes every day.
Tuition is due on the first day your child is at school.
Hoping you have a spectacular week!

Sunday’s Plate from Corn Naturally E Newsletter

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Comment: A calorie is a calorie and a sugar is a sugar… makes me smile.

Barry Popkin is one of the authors behind a landmark 2004 study on sweet stuff. The study looked at the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages and obesity, and turned out to be a pivotal moment in the now-heady demonization of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Thanks in part to Popkin’s work, people around the world are waking up to the problems that HFCS can cause.

So how does Popkin view his work in the rearview mirror? “Now I feel really bad,” he says.

Come again? Why would someone who’d raised public awareness on such a key issue feel glum? It’s a complicated tale filled with fructoses, glucoses, and neuroses.

Some background: HFCS is such a dirty term nowadays that even the corn industry wants to leave it behind. Desperate to fight public perception that the syrup causes obesity and all manner of ills, corn processors in 2008 tried to remarket the product as “corn sugar” and ran a series of hokey commercials insisting it’s just like regular sugar. The sugar industry pounced and last week slapped the corn industry with a lawsuit alleging false advertising.

High-fructose corn syrup didn’t use to be taboo. The sweetener came onto the market in the 1970s but garnered almost no mention in the press until the 1980s. The first headlines about HFCS mostly spelled doom for the sugar industry, which was rapidly losing market share to the cheaper corn-based sweetener. In 1984, Pepsi announced it would be using HFCS exclusively, and Coke promised usage up to 100 percent—a huge blow for sugar. Sugar consumption continued to fall as more and more companies swapped the syrup for the white stuff in products from ketchup to bread. Big sugar looked poised for failure.

Fast-forward 20 years and you have food giants like ConAgra and Sara Lee yanking high-fructose corn syrup from their products and replacing it with “natural” sugar. Hunt’s splashes the change on its labeling. Grocery stores, including local chain MOMs Organic Market, promise HFCS-free shelves. Politicians try to ban it in public schools. How did things go so wrong for high-fructose corn syrup?

The syrup’s bad PR run took off in the mid-2000s. A few reports had trickled in during the 1990s suggesting links between fructose and heart disease, but it wasn’t until the 2004 report suggesting a correlation between a rapid increase in HFCS use and the increase in obesity rates that things turned bitter for the syrup.

Newspapers featured countless headlines about the danger of high-fructose corn syrup. New studies demonstrated the ills of fructose. The public began demanding that HFCS be pulled from products, and some manufacturers obliged. The only problem, of course, is that rather than reduce the use of sweeteners in general, people wanted to replace the syrup with sugar. And science says HFCS and sugar are essentially the same.

“It’s identical,” says Popkin. “If you go to Whole Foods or Wild Oats, if you go back and look at organic products, you’ll see fruit juice. It’s sugar removed from fruit, just as we remove sugar from beets or from sugar cane or honey. It’s all sugar. It’s equally bad.”

Popkin says his study was meant as a wake-up call to scientists that HFCS needed to be studied. “We were only speculating that there might be an adverse effect,” he says, but “it kind of allowed people to take off on high-fructose corn syrup as an evil.” Blogs, websites, and journalists snapped up the research and pumped out headlines about the dangers of the corn-based product, always citing the study. “Other people wrote about it afterwards without even reading it carefully,” Popkin laments.

One problem is the tendency to conflate studies about fructose—of which there are many, and they all tell of dreadful effects on the body like fatty liver disease, dangerous fat, and kidney stones—with HFCS. Of course HFCS has fructose in it. So does sugar.

Kris Osterberg, a dietitian and instructor at Virginia Tech, explains that both sugar and HFCS are made up of glucose and fructose. The difference is that the molecules are bound in sugar and not in HFCS. But the effect on the body, Osterberg says, is the same.

“When you sit down and look at the charts of the last 25, 30 years, you see that the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup has gone up. And obviously, so have our obesity rates,” she says. “There are a lot of things people want to blame for that.” Osterberg believes excess calories are behind the nation’s expanding waistlines. “Any excess sugars and fats, whether the calories come from sucrose (sugar) or high-fructose corn syrup, I don’t think it makes any difference. A calorie is a calorie.”

Don’t go feeling too bad for the poor, maligned corn processing industry. Despite its ugly reputation and pending lawsuit, HFCS still fills grocery shelves in products from crackers to cottage cheese, and the average person consumes 40+ pounds of it every year. It remains cheap due in part to government subsidies for corn. The “perversity” of the situation, as Popkin calls it, is that segments of the public believe HFCS is bad and other sugars are good when he thinks they are all terrible. (Indeed sugar got a recent comeuppance when the New York Times published a piece exploring sugar as “toxic.”)

“All sugar you eat is the same,” Popkin says. “That’s what we know now that we didn’t know in 2004.”

Saturday’s Sun…Happiness in Parenting Series

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I’m inviting you to check out the Happiness Series, and our new feature called Happiness in Parenting Series. As a parent, and even in every day life, do you know what happiness is? According to Google, there are more than 67,200,000 results for the word, and there is even a ³happiness² class at Harvard. With all those results and definitions, it seems like the quest for happiness could take some time. Every day, we see so many things that can make us unhappy – so where can you go to find something that makes you happy?

The search can start with the Happiness Series. The new web series and website takes us through the many ways to find happiness with the goal of cutting through the noise out there and finding what makes US truly happy. It¹s a fun and gossipy look at things that keep us whole and happy. The series is all about fostering good feelings and that when aiming for a happy life, it¹s not about working long hours and being rich and successful. Happiness is all about being well.

Hosted by Sheila Heylin, the 16-part web series talks about timely topics like beauty, wellness, health and relationships. Also on the site is a bevy of brilliant bloggers with subjects near and dear to them. There is something for everyone, and the series takes Sheila¹s core beliefs on these subjects and brings the happiness to us with tips and techniques to use while getting there in our lives. With special guests, thought-provoking insights, and real-life scenarios, we¹ll teach you how to get happy! Even if we just start with five minutes a day! The Happiness Series is online at www.happinessseries.com.

Creating Menus for Kids by Judy Lyden

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Making a menu is not hard. It takes a little balance between serving children what they should eat and what they will eat.
By the time a child is two, he or she has definite likes and dislikes. Children who become picky at an early age usually understand quite well the differences between tastes. They are definite about what is salty or sweet, and they know the difference. They also know bitter and sour and will sometimes ask which taste does a particular food have before they will try it.
Children who continue to eat nearly everything that’s offered haven’t a clue about salty, sweet, sour or bitter. They know it all tastes pretty good, so who cares how you describe it.
Taking into consideration a child’s likes and dislikes should help create children’s menus and be the focus of a child’s nutrition. If a parent is very nutrition conscience, and only gives his or her child the most nutritional food available, a lot of children are either going to be listless because they won’t take in the right amount of calories, bored with the whole idea of food or passive in general about food because it’s no fun.
Eating is one of the great pleasures in life. Eating is an investment in the body. It can make or break complexion, energy levels, continued health, vitality, and even make hormone issues less and less frequent or more and more frequent depending on what you need or want.
Food is not “just something you do” three or four times a day. Feeding the body is one of the most important things you will ever do, and doing it well can change your life.
The first thing to think about with children is absolute eating times. Breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner and dessert are arranged during the day to promote hunger and desire. Children who snack all day usually eat too many empty calories and too much “non food.” They are rarely hungry at meal time, and they all to often fail to eat nutritious food in favor of waiting till the coast is clear in order to have more junk. It’s the universal story.
Setting up breakfast, lunch dinner and snack times is important enough to center the whole household around. What we do before breakfast, after breakfast, before lunch, after lunch, before snack, after snack, before dinner, and after dinner will help organize a family like no other successful approach to keeping a house healthy.
With the times set for eating, the next step is deciding what to serve. Keeping in mind children need so many calories per day. Here’s a chart:

Gender Age (years) Sedentaryb Moderately Activec Actived
Child 2-3 1,000 1,000-1,400 1,000-1,400
Female 4-8
9-13
14-18
19-30
31-50
51+		 1,200
1,600
1,800
2,000
1,800
1,600		 1,400-1,600
1,600-2,000
2,000
2,000-2,200
2,000
1,800		 1,400-1,800
1,800-2,200
2,400
2,400
2,200
2,000-2,200
Male 4-8
9-13
14-18
19-30
31-50
51+		 1,400
1,800
2,200
2,400
2,200
2,000		 1,400-1,600
1,800-2,200
2,400-2,800
2,600-2,800
2,400-2,600
2,200-2,400		 1,600-2,000
2,000-2,600
2,800-3,200
3,000
2,800-3,000
2,400-2,800

The United States Department of Education Child Care Food Program preaches that children need a whole grain bread product, a veggie or fruit and milk every morning. This is supposed to use up about 25% of your child’s dietary needs. So when creating that menu, remember that children love sweets, but those sweets should have the nutritional value of whole grains. Adding a 100% juice and an eight ounce glass of milk will make a complete meal.
Milk is an important part of bone health, and too often children who have tasted thinner substances prefer nearly anything to milk. When children drink too much milk at breakfast, lunch and dinner, because they are avoiding other foods and want to feel full, they will often become constipated. This is not milk intolerance. This is called “milk belly” and can be avoided with one glass of milk per meal.
At lunch, a child should get to indulge himself in food he really likes. This is, for some, the best eating he or she will do during any day. Make sure the menus made include a protein, a fruit and veggie, or two fruits or two veggies, a whole grain and milk. This offers the child enough variety of nutrients as well as a big enough offer of calories so that he or she is not whiny or hungry till afternoon snack.
But consider two like lunches: A grilled cheese-food sandwich on white bread with chips and a coke will add all the right calories, but none of the nutrition a child needs. So switch breads to whole grain use real cheese, use whole grain chips and a sliced apple and a handful of carrots or applesauce, or raisins or banana or melon or grapes. It makes a much sounder lunch and offers a child both the hard crunchy with the sweet. A lunch with a food value of 50% of a child’s nutrition needs and 50% of his calories is far superior to a lunch with 50% of his caloric needs and zero percent of his nutrition needs. White bread, cheese food, and artery clogging chips might satisfy the child one way, but won’t accomplish anything but added body fat and a disposition for illness.
I believe snacks should be calorie high and fun. I’m a baker, and baking cookies is what makes any parent aces in the eyes of their children and grandchildren. But baking doesn’t have to be sugar on sugar on white flour on lard. It’s a balance…what a child should eat with what a child likes. Always reduce your cookie batter sugar. Always use whole grain flours. Add oats, use butter, whole eggs, spices like cinnamon, and anything healthy you think your child will eat. Often the cookies we make at school are the healthiest things children eat all day.
Snacks should not be more than 15 % of calorie daily intake.
Dinner, for many children, is not eaten. If your child is not a dinner eater, don’t fight it. Give your child a piece of cheese, a little fruit, a finger veggie, and some whole grain crackers. If you add up his calories at the end of snack, you’ll see he needs very little extra food. Why push or force it? Children are tired at the end of the day, and sometimes that big pot roast, or the spaghetti is just too much for a little person.
But at the same time, a child should not pass dinner by and gravitate towards boxes of junk from the forbidden cabinet!
Eating is not something most children do with grace or knowledge. That’s where mom and dad come in. Mom and dad do know how to read and know how to cook – or should – and also they should know what children should and should not eat.
Now let’s get down to the fun stuff. If your child eats well every day, there is no harm in giving him as many treats as he wants. The truth is, children will eat the calories their bodies need. So you can offer a child many things, and he probably won’t over indulge himself if he’s well fed with good stuff first. And too, if he has the routine of eating learned at the appropriate times, he will probably remain thin, active and healthy all his life.

Wise Wednesday…From Food Navigator USA

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Higher prices are changing food shopping behavior, Deloitte

1 commentBy Elaine Watson, 20-Jul-2011

Related topics: Food prices, The obesity problem, Sodium reduction,Market

Comment: As a buyer of food that serves fifty kids and teachers three meals for five days a week, I keep going back to the fresh food and find my bill is less than most families. When you buy each article as a separate and individual purchase, and not a “package” you save money and the waste is limited.

Almost two thirds (62 percent) of shoppers claim that their food buying behavior has changed as a result of higher food prices, according to a new survey.

While ‘frugality fatigue’ (to borrow General Mills’ phrase) might have set in for some after months of economic gloom, habits are changing as consumers try to adjust to higher prices, says Deloitte in its latest Consumer Food and Product Insight Survey.

88 percent say prices have risen

The vast majority (88 percent) of the 2,000 consumers polled by Deloitte in mid-May said retail food prices had recently gone up, compared with 67 percent who felt prices in restaurants had risen.

As a result, 75 percent claimed to be choosing some cheaper products, 48 percent said they were buying fewer products overall and 40 percent said they had bought more private label goods.

Meanwhile, 90 percent said they were eating out less, 25 percent opted for cheaper restaurants, while 16 percent dined at the same place, but chose cheaper menu options.

Rising gas prices had also prompted 73 percent to make fewer trips to food stores to conserve fuel.

Nutrition: 76 percent seeking out healthier options in store

As for healthy eating, asked whether they would like to see more foods on a high-fiber, low-sugar, low-salt or low-calorie platform, 72 percent, 70 percent, 69 percent and 68 percent respectively said yes (although what consumers say they want and what they actually buy does not always correlate).

Given the demise of Atkins, a surprising number (six out of 10) also claimed that they would like to see more low-carb foods available in stores.

Just over half also claimed to read the Nutrition Facts box on unfamiliar packaged foods to check out calories, fat, sodium levels, while 76 percent claimed to be “increasingly looking for healthier food options” while grocery shopping.

This, coupled with the roll-out of front-of-pack nutrition labeling presented manufacturers with an opportunity, said Pat Conroy , US consumer products practice leader at Deloitte

“[This] presents a tremendous opportunity for consumer products companies that are willing to enhance their nutritional transparency.”

Smart phones and food shopping

The growth of smartphones also presented food manufacturers and retailers with new opportunities, said Conroy, with just over a third of consumers polled using their mobile phones to access/view social coupons or limited-time deals and a third of those owning smartphones or web-enabled mobile devices using them in store to manage a food shopping list or recipe(s).

“Smarter phones and smarter shoppers are transforming today’s shopping experience,” said Conroy.

“Moving forward, consumer product companies must make themselves more accessible to consumers who are using 21st century technologies to look for coupons, store specials and to even shop for groceries.”

Click here to access the survey results in full.

Tuesday’s Teacher

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New Race to Top Stresses Pre-K Tests, Early Ed. Program Ratings

By Michele McNeil on July 1, 2011 12:01 AM |

From Education Week.com Politics K-12

Comment: Good luck Indiana. In our city, teachers in day care centers are forbidden to teach…they leave it to the kindergartens. So…what’s the test on?

To win a grant in the U.S. Department of Education’s new Race to the Top competition for early-childhood education aid, states will have to develop rating systems for their programs, craft appropriate standards and tests for young children, and set clear expectations for what teachers should know.

That’s according to the proposed rules released today by the Obama administration that will govern the $500 million competition, which was made possible by the fiscal 2011 budget deal Congress passed in April.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was given $700 million in new Race to the Top money, and chose to put most of it into early education, while keeping a $200 million slice to award to runners-up from last year’s competition. (Details of that separate contest have yet to be announced.)

The Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge awards will range from $50 million to $100 million, depending on a state’s population, and the contest is open to all states, not just the winners in last year’s competition. This could be especially attractive for small states, which were eligible for maximum grants of $75 million in the first edition of Race to the Top. For big states, $100 million won’t go as far; the biggest states in the original Race to the Top won $700 million each. For this early-learning competition, four states—California, Florida, New York, and Texas—are eligible for $100 million.

In crafting this new iteration of Race to the Top, the Obama administration is building upon the success of last year’s $4 billion competition, which pushed states to embrace charter schools, merit pay for teachers, and better data systems. This competition is designed to improve the quality of and access to early-childhood programs, and to eliminate some of the “vast inequities” in care, said Special Assistant to the President for Education in the White House Domestic Policy Council Roberto Rodriguez, speaking in a call with reporters Thursday afternoon.

“We believe this Race to the Top can have the same kind of impact,” Rodriguez said. “How do we really do more to boost the quality of our early-learning programs?”

Under the competition guidelines developed by the Education Department—working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—a winning state must:

• Come up with and use early-learning and development standards for children, along with assessments;
• Develop and administer kindergarten-readiness tests, and develop rating systems for early-education programs;
• Demonstrate cooperation across the multiple agencies that touch early-childhood issues (from departments of health to education), and establish statewide standards for what early-childhood educators should know;
• Have a good track record on early learning, and an ambitious plan to improve those programs;
• Make sure early learning and prekindergarten data is incorporated into its longitudinal data system.

(And no, states do not have to develop pay-for-performance plans for early childhood teachers—which was an important component in the first Race to the Top competition.)

In a nod to rural districts and advocates, who often feel overlooked by the department, the Obama administration says it may go out of its way to reward states with large rural populations, potentially bypassing a higher-scoring urban state in favor of lower-scoring rural state.

Just as in the original Race to the Top, this competition will rely on outside judges to pick the winners. But the ultimate decision rests with Duncan.

Because the department has to get these awards out the door by the end of this year, officials have waived the typical rulemaking process. But they are asking for input. The public can comment on the proposed criteria through July 11. Applications will be available in late summer, and awards will be made by the end of the year. States will have until Dec. 31, 2015 to spend their winnings.