Be the Best Mom in 2013

Last week I shared one of my New Year’s goals to “Be the Best Mom” with more positive thinking.  Each Thursday we will be featuring a different mom and her unique goals to “Be the Best Mom” in 2013, including specific steps that you can implement, too!  This week I am so excited to introduce Karyn of Teach Beside Me.  Of course Karyn is already obviously a great mama, but lets see what she has in store for being a better mom this year…

Teach Your Kids About Good Nutrition

I am thrilled to be guest posting this week at B-Inspired Mama.  This year, one goal that I have decided to work on in our family is to help my children learn the importance of good nutrition. As a former nutrition teacher, it is something that has always been important to me and I want them to understand it as well.

I recently created a free nutrition unit for teaching kids.  It is full of fun learning ideas, book lists, activities, and links to resources around the web.  Today I am going to share a few of the activities we have started this month to help us learn about good nutrition.

Fruits and Vegetables

As a way to help my kids eat more fruits and vegetables, we have been doing the “Fruit and Vegetable Fill Up.”  It is an outline of a body that you hang on the wall.  Each time they eat any produce, they get to put a sticker on the chart.  We like to use the produce stickers when they are available, but not all fruits and vegetables have them.  You can make it into a challenge between siblings to make it more exciting!

Eating the Alphabet

We have also started a fun project called Eating the Alphabet to go along with the book Eating The Alphabet by Lois Ehlert.  Each week we are trying fruits and vegetables from a different letter of the alphabet.  This week for letter A we had a snack with pretzels in the shape of the letter A, apricots, apples and avocados.  I have a printable chart to help you keep track of it in my nutrition unit, too.

 

Food Labels

Another activity to help kids really understand what they are eating is to teach them about food labels.  We spent a little time on that this week.  We got out a few of their favorite foods and compared the labels.  We looked at the food labels on cereal boxes, crackers, chips, bread, and condiments to see which ones are the best for us.  We compared fat, sugar, fiber, and nutrients in the different foods.  This was a great activity and really helped them to be able to read and find out for themselves if it is good for them.  They also better understand why things are not very good for their bodies.

A fabulous book to help explain nutrients, vitamins, minerals and the need for them in our body is: Good Enough to Eat by Lizzie Rockwell.  This book explains good nutrition in such simple terms and really helped my kids!

 

A couple of other fun books on food & good nutrition:

Little Pea by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

The Monster Health Book by Edward Miller

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

Oh the Things You Can Do That Are Good For You! by Tish Rabe

The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food by Stan & Jan Berenstain

 

Be a Good Example

Most things in life are best taught by example!  If you are eating well and taking care of your body, your children will see that and model your habits.   I hope this will inspire you and your family to this year to make better choices in your eating!  I would love to hear any fun things you do to teach your kids these important life skills.

 

Karyn is a former Home Ec. teacher and currently homeschools her three young children.  She loves family, crafts, cooking, reading, being in nature, running and music. She blogs at Teach Beside Me.

I am so excited about Karyn’s free nutrition unit.  I’ve used a sticker chart for my picky eaters, but her body shaped one is even cuter!  And we’ve done color taste testing snacks, but never ones based on a specific letter of the alphabet.  Can’t wait to try some of these tricks to teach my kids about good nutrition.  

What are you doing this year to “Be the Best Mom?”

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