Healthy snacks of fresh fruits and vegetables are helping to teach kids healthy habits at local schools across Montana.
“We can teach children about a wide variety of fruits and vegetables they might enjoy,” OPI superintendent Denise Juneau said in a press release. “The hope is that children will continue to make fruits and vegetables a part of their eating habits.”
It was reported this week in the Lake County Leader that K. William Harvey in Ronan and Pablo Elementary are both in the first year of a new snack program funded by grants awarded by Montana Superintendent Denise Juneau's office:
“The teachers love it and it gives kids exposure to healthy snacks,” Cornwell said. “I handed out crackers when we had radishes, and we want to have the kids try at least a bite. It’s a fun way to experiment with food, and we couldn’t do it without the program.”
The program doesn’t just provide a healthy snack for the children.
Cornwell and the other teachers have incorporated games and teaching lessons into snack time. Cornwell has her kindergartners sound out the words, guess if it’s a fruit or vegetable, work on descriptive words for the snack and even incorporates technology, searching for the fruit on the Internet and showing the kids how it is grown and other fun facts.
