Barnstable Office

Eating in Color:

For Barnstable preschoolers, the rainbow begins with NEP.

It’s never too early to learn the magic and beauty of fruits and vegetables. And what better way to get kids off to a healthy start than through the bright colors, fun, and interactive adventures of NEP’s “Rainbow on a Plate” program for preschoolers?

NEP’s Barnstable office reaches 10 Head Start classrooms each year with their series of hands-on presentations featuring a rainbow of green, orange, yellow, red, and even purple fruits and vegetables, all ripe for the tasting.   Activities include shoebox gardens and a puppet who learns, along with the children, that an all-brown lunch is a sad lunch indeed.

“Because we present information in a fun way, it’s much more effective than sitting around the dinner table and saying, ‘You have to eat this, it’s good for you,” says NEP nutrition educator Kim Concra. “By the second meeting, the kids are telling me what fruits and vegetables they’ve eaten during the week.” The program succeeds in part by getting kids excited by the sights, sounds, and smells of the new foods they’re trying, from raw green beans to edamame (soybeans). “We pass out edamame pods, and the teachers are amazed how many kids will eat them. Just the act of touching the pods and opening them up makes the children more eager to taste them.”

And it’s not just the kids who benefit. Concra involves teachers as well, by bringing in foods, such as mangos, that they may not have experience preparing.  Kim also keeps in touch with the teachers long after the program has ended, providing tips, suggestions, and additional classroom materials that reinforce the NEP lessons and activities. “The Head Start nutrition coordinator, who does home visits, says that the families she sees are recognizing the importance of fruits and vegetables, and that these foods can help their children grow up strong.”

Nor does the learning stop at the classroom door. NEP has worked with Head Start to improve their menus, and parents get in on the fun through grocery store tours where they can apply the information from Concra’s lessons. And best of all, says Concra, those healthy messages stay with kids for years to come. “When we see these kids in elementary schools, they’re still asking, ‘How many colors do you have on your plate?’”