Encouraging healthy eating habits for your kids
Nutrition is important at every age. For the strong and healthy development of your child, we need to make sure that we are encouraging healthy eating habits for our kids within the San Francisco Bay Area daycares. Getting your little ducklings to eat healthy can be a battle as all they want is sweets and treats, but it’s a battle worth fighting. Here are some ways in which you can encourage healthy eating habits for your child:
Focus on providing a wholesome diet
It’s not just about particular foods. Overall, you want to make sure that your child is eating foods that are hardly processed. It’s all about the simple ingredients; Maybe you make the pasta from scratch rather than buying a highly processed pasta from the grocery store. The ingredients that are in the foods that your little ducklings eat can make a big difference in their healthy development and health overall.
Basically, you want to aim for food that is as close to natural as possible, and less packaged.
Be a role model
If you want your child to eat in a healthy, hardly processed, and wholesome way, you should too! Remember that you are your little duckling’s role model and the food choices that you make on a daily basis will have an effect on the eating habits that they have. So, don’t ask your child to eat vegetables while you stuff your face with potato chips!
Disguise the taste of healthier foods
Almost no child likes the look or taste of vegetables or any healthy foods for that matter, so you have to be a creative chef. Think about how you can disguise the taste of some of those healthier foods that create a battle at the kitchen table. Some ideas are mixing foods that they like with the foods that they don’t like. For example, maybe you mix mashed carrots with mashed potatoes or maybe you add a sweet dip to the fruits that your little duckling despises.
Get kids involved
To teach your kids about the wholesome way of eating, let them be a part of the process! Consider taking them to the grocery store with you and teach them about the different foods in the store, maybe get them familiarized with the variety of fruits and vegetables. In addition, kids love getting dirty… have them help you cook dinner! They will enjoy it more and it can be a family bonding activity.
Cook more meals at home
As busy parents in the San Francisco Bay Area, it can be hard to find time to cook homemade meals for your little ducklings and might be a lot easier to just get takeout...try not to! Restaurant and takeout meals have more added sugar and unhealthy fat so cooking at home can have a huge impact on your kids’ health. If you make large batches, cooking just a few times can be enough to feed your family for the whole week.
At Little Ducklings Clubhouse, we know how important the healthy development of your child is and that’s why we prioritize home-cooked meals. You can check out our meal schedule on our website but here is the gist:
For breakfast, we serve food such as oatmeal, rice pudding, eggs, bread etc. Lunch varies but we always make sure to have one sort of protein and veggies in all our dishes. For snack time we always serve fruits, blended fruits, cocktail fruits, and cut-up fruits. For more information about our meals, don’t hesitate to contact the clubhouse.
About Little Ducklings Clubhouse
Little Ducklings Clubhouse started out as an at home business focused on babies and toddlers. The daycare blew up quickly and founder Marlene Ramos went on to officially open her very own daycare facility. Little Ducklings Clubhouse is focused on providing a positive and supporting environment for these growing children bi incorporating fun activities and learning initiatives to prepare them for school. Our daily goal is to be nurturing and loving to all of our children.