At a time when more North Carolina children are obese than ever before in history, local students and childcare professionals gathered at the Little Bites, Big Steps nutrition workshop. The workshop, hosted by the Fuquay-Varina High School Family and Consumer Sciences Early Childhood Education interns April 22, taught attendees how to encourage children to eat healthily and exercise. The workshop was the third at the high school, which holds one every other year.

“Nutrition and health understanding is particularly critical for the teachers and caregivers of young children because the habits and preferences they develop will be with them often into adulthood,” said Karen Brown, family and consumer sciences teacher, early childhood education coordinator, and career and technical education department co-chair at Fuquay-Varina High School.

Brown’s students intern three days a week at local childcare centers, working with a variety of ages.

“We founded this nutrition and health workshop as a way to bring all our early childhood education internship site directors, teachers and interns together to say thanks for participation in our program, and provide supervising teachers more tools to use in their individual centers.”

Childcare professionals earned two continuing education credits for their attendance and participation. From creating flyers advertising the workshop to making and serving a dinner of turkey and beef casseroles, bread, fruits, vegetables, low-calorie punchbowl cake and more, to welcoming the guests, to participating in the workshop itself, the students were involved in every aspect.

“The students see the bigger picture of how our world works: continuing education, collaboration with other teachers and in the business world,” Brown said. “Everybody has to work together to create outstanding societies.”

Nannette Ausby, who presented the workshop and is both the director of Sisters’ Childcare Services in Holly Springs and a UNC TV trainer, said busy family lives and less active lives, with children playing outside less and with computer and video games more, contribute to childhood obesity. “The fingers get the workout but the children don’t,” Ausby said.

Ausby said the workshop enables attendees to help the children they watch make better choices in both eating and exercising.

“It impacts the lives of very one of us, as well as the lives of the children we impact, as well as their families each and every day,” she said.

Tips spanning a variety of health topics were given during the workshop, including:

Offer a variety of nutritious choices of healthy foods on children’s plates, so no matter what a child eats, he fills up on nutritious food. Likewise, offer a child a choice between two healthy snacks. “They are not going to die if they don’t have that cookie, but they will die if you continue to give them all this junk food,” Ausby said.

Try not to worry about how much a child eats; focus on what the child eats. Preschoolers have periods of their lives when they eat more and times when they eat less.

Don’t offer foods as bribes; children may end up disliking foods they are made to eat to receive dessert. A new food may need to be offered up to 15 times before a child accepts it.

Getting children involved in making dishes and growing or harvesting produce will encourage them to try the foods. “If they get involved with doing something, they will normally or usually eat it,” Ausby said.

Children need 5-7 servings of fresh fruits or vegetables per day and plenty of water to avoid a loss of strength and a buildup of waste products. “Even children become sluggish if they don’t get enough water,” Ausby said.

Preschoolers need at least two hours and toddlers need at least 90 minutes of physical activity each day, and children should not sit longer than 60 minutes at one time. Preschoolers enjoy dancing to music, trying out obstacle courses made with pillows, playing with balls, taking walks and more. Activity not only decreases obesity; activity can increase school performance, assist bone growth, and promote cognitive, social and emotional development.

Workshop attendees left not only with information from the workshop but a teacher’s book and children’s books on healthy eating and living, a pedometer, a bag, and a kit for grieving families that includes a DVD and instructional book.