Happy Heart Day! The Nutrition and Wellness Committee wanted to make sure we passed along some fun and tasty "heart" healthy snack ideas for classrooms planning Valentine's Day parties. We have put together a page of fun suggestions for you to check out. If you and your child decide that something more than just the Valentine card itself is needed, we encourage you to select a non-food item. We have given several fun ideas that we came up with (in the document below), but we think all of you could probably be even more creative. Keep it simple, keep it inexpensive, keep it eco-friendly and most of all keep it FUN! We hope this inspires you and opens your Heart! With lots of love on Valentine's Day!
Thank you Edna Families! You have truly made the year much smoother for many of the children and families with nut allergies by attending to Edna's Nut Alert Policy. We do understand this can be a challenge when packing food, so Lisa Barnes has once again (see entries below) created an amazing list of some tasty and healthy food items to quickly make and pack for school, day trips, or anytime on-the-go. These foods do not require much in the way of preparation. They are easy to make and don't need a real recipe - only your imagination and your child's appetite. Lisa has also included some great nut free alternatives such as soy nut butter, and sunflower butter which can be a good source of protein and makes a healthy snack ...read on. If your child is in Kindergarten or 1st Grade, and you are concerned that packing them a lunch with a nut free butter included may be met with skepticism by teachers and aides who are on lunch duty, simply include a note detailing that the butter is nut free. Also with all the children at Edna Maguire, but again...especially with the younger ones, please be sure to remind them of the importance of washing their hands thoroughly with soap and water when they are done eating foods that others may be allergic to.Of course there are many reasons to remind them to wash their hands.We will get into more of this in another entry soon. Thanks for your continued effort in keeping the food you pack for your child nut free. It really makes it a much safer place for the children with severe nut allergies.
Getting everyone out the door, dressed, teeth brushed, and lunches packed in time for school(or grandmas or daycare) can be a real challenge. Often times packing a lunch is an afterthought. Some parents reach for easy items that are prepackaged and marketed for children, but these often contain empty calories with little nutrition. Your child will feel better and have more energy and focus during the day when eating nutritious whole foods, rather than processed snacks filled with additives and preservatives. A banana is just as easy to grab as a bag of chips, and it comes in its own compostable wrapper. Lisa Barnes, Edna Parent and owner and author of Petit Appetit has compiled an extremely thoughtful step by step process to creating a healthy and fun lunch We hope you enjoy the helpful suggestions she has put together. Thank you Lisa!
Booooo! If you want to see something SCARY on Halloween, read some of the ingredients on those giant bags of Halloween candy! There you'll see: partially hydrogenated oil, high fructose corn syrup, alkali, chemicals, artificial colorings and more. For those looking for greener, non-candy items to pass out to trick-or-treaters and party guests, here is an abbreviated list of suggestions from Green Halloween www.greenhalloween.com. We know we are catching both parents and teachers alike at the last minute before Halloween Classroom Parties being planned for this upcoming Friday, but please DO check these suggestions out. There's a lot of really fabulous easy ideas that can be implemented very easily even at late stage in the game. We hope you find this useful!
I am just getting up on posting some of the things that may be of interest to you. Apologies for the tardiness in this matter. I have been receiving the Revy Reader from Revolution Foods and would really love to make this available to all. Being that it is too large for Wednesday folders, we will simply post on our blog site here. Here are the past issues. We will hopefully get all of our documents pooled into a better location on this blog page for you, but until then. Here they are:
If anyone would like any more information about the Revy Reader or Nutrition collaboration with Revolution Foods, please feel free to contact me: margaret_schultz@sbcglobal.net
The Nutrition and Wellness Committee is committed to working with parents and teachers in reducing our children's exposure to toxic cleaning agents and reducing the Earth's exposure to these substances.Thanks to the efforts of Nathalie Fraise of our Nutrition and Wellness team who did intensive research, we have come up with a list that has some great Green Cleaning Products for both the classroom and household. We hope you find this helpful and encourage you to be in touch with us with your feedback. We would also like to extend a big thanks to Tim Ryan, the Director of Maintenance and Operation of all Mill Valley School District Facilities for streamlining the classroom cleaning supplies and being sure that we use the least possible toxic cleaning substances while still maintaining a healthy and safe learning environment for our children.
The Nutrition and Wellness Committee would really like to thank all of you parents for being so fabulous about your joint effort in keeping all of the Edna Kids healthy. This ranges from showing kindness to children with life threatening nut allergies by refraining from snack and lunch items with nuts (you've all been doing great!), addressing lice issues promptly and thouroughly, and keeping sick kids home from school, to reminding your kids to wash their hands well especially during cold and flu season! We look forward to providing you with more information relating to promoting a healthy environment for the children throughout the new year, but before the year is over, we would like to be sure you have some FABULOUS ideas for healthy snacks for class winter holiday parties (pdf). We hope these are helpful to you!
We've come up with some great healthy ideas for classroom parties or other Halloween festivities that won't break the bank AND are eco-conscious. We tried to take into account snacks that reflect the produce in season and that do not generate a ton of trash (wrappers, etc.). These are just SOME ideas. Use your own creativity. Kid's will love it if it's FUN!
To view the recommendations online click here. For a printable PDF version click here.
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