Health: Give Your Homeschooler Five!
By Mimi Rothschild
The next time your homeschool child says, "give me five", give him what he needs: five servings of fruits and vegetables a day!
It is important that you teach your homeschool child about the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables. Most people don't get the recommended servings of five fruits and vegetables each day. It really isn't that difficult, though. Think about how often you eat throughout the day. You have breakfast, lunch, and dinner (hopefully). Most likely you have a morning and afternoon snack and some sort of dessert after dinner. To get the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables daily, you and your homeschool child should try to work in a fruit or vegetable, or both, every time you eat. For example:
- Add fruit to your cereal in the morning or have a small bowl of strawberries, raspberries or blueberries on the side of your bagel or toast. Adding a small glass of fruit juice (only 6 ounces) is a quick and easy way to get in a serving of fruit.
- Have a piece of fruit for a mid-morning snack, or a "homeschool break time" snack. Apples, bananas and oranges are great "portable" fruits, meaning they can travel easily.
- Have a salad for lunch or have a small salad with lunch and also have some fruit.
- At dinner, have a small side salad and a side vegetable like corn, spinach, zucchini or broccoli. Another thing you can do is have two warm vegetables like broccoli and corn.
- There are many delicious desserts that have fruit as a main ingredient, such as strawberry shortcake, cheesecake with fresh berries, and banana splits. Even berries with whipped cream make a delicious dessert.
If you and your homeschool child were to follow these suggestions daily, you would take in at least five servings of fruits and vegetables.
Many people also believe that a serving is huge. The suggested serving size for fruits and vegetables is smaller than you probably think.
- A medium apple, banana, peach, plum or orange is considered one serving.
- About ½ cup of any cut-up fruit or cooked vegetable is considered one serving.
- A 6-ounce glass of fruit or vegetable juice is all you need to count as one fruit or vegetable serving.
- If the vegetable is large and leafy, you will need about 1 cup to satisfy one serving.
There are lots of great ways that you can teach your homeschool student about eating healthy and getting the right amount of fruits and vegetables each day.
- Have your homeschool student keep a diary or log for a week of all the food your family consumes. Compare this diary or log to another one that he completes after your family makes a conscious effort to increase the amount of fruits and vegetables you are eating.
- If your homeschool child is younger, connect the teaching of colors to the consumption of fruits and vegetables. If they are older, make an edible art project out of beautifully colored fruits and vegetables.
There are many creative things that you can do with fruits and vegetables to get your homeschool child to be conscious of what they eat, and in what portions.
________________________________________________________________
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, children's rights activist, author, and Founder and C.E.O. of online education company Learning by Grace, Inc. Rothschild and her husband of twenty-eight years reside in suburban Philadelphia with their eight children.
Feeling that “our current system of education has broken its promise,” Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. to provide families with Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children all over the world.
In addition to her twenty years of experience as a homeschool mother, Rothschild has written a number of books dealing with education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Home Education Websites Blog consists of helpful online content and activities for Christian homeschooling families.
Electronic reproduction of this article is permitted if content is published unchanged, appropriate credit is given, and the article title links to corresponding article webpage.
