Nutrition Week at Buttercups Childcare!

Buttercups Childcare and Early Learning Centre celebrated Nutrition Week from 15th-21st October, encouraging all of us to make healthy food choices!

Here at Buttercups, healthy food is not an afterthought; it drives our daily menu. Our cook Ari, always provides nutritious and fun meals for all dietary requirements and ages. Thank you Ari for keeping our children healthy and happy. 

As part of the Nutrition Week Celebrations, our Early Learning Educators discussed “sometimes” and “everyday“ foods and the importance of nutrition. To demonstrate, our Educators provided a spontaneous learning experience by cutting a potato in half; placing one half with fresh water and the second half with salt water. The children then observed the two halves; the texture, the look and feel of the potatoes and noticed that the salt water potato was wrinkly and had shrunk due to the dehydration from the salt, whilst the freshwater potato was more plump and the texture was smoother as it was more hydrated. From this experience, the children learned what happens when we eat salty foods such as chips and the reason why these foods are categorised as “sometimes” foods. 

Buttercups Early Childhood Educators provided the children with a range of exciting hands-on sensory, messy play and art & craft experiences such as sorting, cutting fruits and veggies, painting papier-mâché fruits, pasting fruits and veggies on a plate. Our Kindy children also made a concoction of orange and lemon juice, which they said would give them more powers!

Our children loved learning all about healthy foods, and learned the importance of having at least five serves of fruits and vegetables per day. They demonstrated curiosity, sensory exploration, hand & eye coordination, fine motor skills, cognitive skills and verbal/ non-verbal skills during the different experiences they had.