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Nutrition education empowers students with the knowledge and skills to make healthy food and beverage choices as part of a healthy lifestyle. School nutrition professionals and other school staff can support this by delivering consistent nutrition messaging and promoting the health benefits of school meals. As you plan for the upcoming school year, explore the following Team Nutrition resources to find creative ways to promote healthy eating and cafeteria connections based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) and MyPlate.
Discover MyPlate
Use this fun, inquiry-based resource to foster the development of healthy lifestyles among kindergarten-aged students. It contains six lessons, emergent reader mini books, food cards, student workbooks, parent handouts, and kid-friendly recipes. Discover MyPlate was recently updated to reflect the current DGA, including more food examples from different cultures and a focus on where food comes from.
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Serving Up MyPlate: A Yummy Curriculum
Integrate nutrition education into math, science, English language arts, and health with this collection of enlightening elementary classroom materials. The curriculum focuses on the importance of eating from all five food groups, using the MyPlate icon within a variety of hands-on activities. In addition to inquiry-driven lessons, handouts and songs are included to create cafeteria and home connections and provide students with further practice and real-world experience.
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Cafeteria Connection: Time to get creative with MyPlate! Ask students to connect foods on the school lunch menu with the five food groups or organize a contest for students to design table tents and placemats that feature MyPlate messages. Try more Serving Up MyPlate activities!
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Fueling My Healthy Life
Empower middle school students to make healthy food choices that can lead to positive behavior change with the Fueling My Healthy Life project-based materials. Learning activities utilize digital interactives, informational text articles, student assessments, and videos to emphasize the importance of eating breakfast and how to choose healthy eating patterns that are low in added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium.
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Cafeteria Connection: Check out the How School Lunch Is Made and How You Can Help article inspired by questions USDA has received from students about school lunch. This resource covers what is in a school meal, who plans the menus, and how students can have a voice in the process.
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Stronger with School Meals
Promote school meals with these exciting and colorful Stronger with School Meals resources, designed to be used by teachers and other school staff, parents, and students. This resource includes activity booklets, stickers, button images, thank you cards, and infographics. The activity booklets feature a word search, school meal BINGO, and a matching game with nutrients and their important roles.
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Cafeteria Connection: Start the school year right with school meals! Include these educational materials in your back-to-school events to promote school meals. Make sure to share the school meals menu, along with information on the school nutrition department website, and other contact information.
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Team Nutrition Web Quizzes
Test your knowledge and build nutrition skills with Team Nutrition's collection of web quizzes. These fun ten-question quizzes focus on school breakfast, school lunch, the school nutrition environment, and more. Upon completion of each quiz, a link to resources is provided to expand knowledge on the topic and build nutrition skills.
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Cafeteria Connection: Use these interactive web quizzes at trainings or as part of a presentation on school meals to encourage further discussion. Added bonus - try the quizzes during school wellness committee meetings to make them more interactive!
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Local School Wellness Policies
Local School Wellness Policy requirements include specific goals for nutrition promotion and education. Parents, teachers, school nutrition staff, school nurses, and others can be part of a school district's Local School Wellness Committee. Check out your district's Local School Wellness Policy to learn more and get involved!
For more information, visit Team Nutrition's Local School Wellness Policy Tools and Resources webpage.
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Schools that participate in the USDA’s Child Nutrition Programs can request free print copies of certain Team Nutrition materials. Order today!
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