Methodology For Building The Habit Of "clean Hands And Clean Eating" In Children From 1 To Three Years Old

Improper conduct of the child's upbringing during this period would lead to an error in building cultural and hygienic and nutritional habits.

Methodology for building the "clean eating" habit of children in early childhood from 1 to 3 years.

It is common knowledge that the most important period of a child's upbringing are the first seven years of his life. Improper conduct of the child's upbringing during this period would lead to an error in building cultural and hygienic habits. Failures in this direction manifest themselves too quickly and pose various problems in the upbringing and development of the child.

The study of the favorable conditions, as well as the ways and methods of protection, weakening and removal of the harmful unfavorable factors of the environment surrounding the child is a subject of hygiene.

Special hygiene habits aim to provide the most favorable conditions for his physical and mental development, to give recommendations for removing or weakening the effects of all harmful moments coming from the environment. In addition, in recent years, enough physical data has been accumulated, proving that a number of diseases often start from childhood, an objectivity that proves that the health of an adult is formed to a significant extent already in his early years. Everything said so far is indicative of the importance of teaching the child to the habit of "clean nutrition”.

What distinguishes a child from an adult is that he is constantly growing and developing. The child is not actually a reduced adult, but an organism with its own anatomical, psychological and physiological features. They must be well known by the mother (and the teacher). , so that she can ensure his proper upbringing.

When raising the child, appropriate conditions must be created for its normal development, i.e. to create conditions for nutrition, hygienic care, education, etc. , in which the child will develop best.

What is a habit?

In the life of a child from one to three years of age, there are many essential moments filled with a variety of activities, which are repeated daily and periodically and are of great importance for the child's development. Such moments are the time for sleeping, eating, waking up. After repeated repetition, they become in habits that are very important to the younger generation.

A habit is a person's tendency to perform certain actions. In the process of long-term exercises, this tendency begins to be experienced as a need that makes the child act in a certain way. In general, habits can be seen as directionality, manifested in the child's mental activity child and in building his personality. Initially, these actions are performed with a lot of effort and focused attention. Through repeated repetitions, they become automatic, i.e. they begin to take place "by themselves".

The need to form the habit of "clean eating" is from a purely hygienic point of view. It is imperative that the child learns from an early age not to get his clothes dirty when eating, not to talk during meals and to enjoy the way he is served the food.

Habits are created throughout a person's life, but the beginning is set in early childhood. Due to the great instability of the nervous system, during this age (from 1 to 3 years) the child tends to quickly build habits, but also very quickly to destroy them. If he feels pleasure while performing an accidental action, he easily begins to repeat it many times and thus the habit is formed. The easiest way for a child to get used to eating independently and cleanly is between the first and second year of his life.

"Clean eating, cleanliness in general, in addition to its hygienic aspects, also has aesthetic properties. It forms the first preferences for the beautiful and attractive. 

The habit of "clean eating" is a prerequisite for a healthier lifestyle.

The first step in mastering a habit is for the child to develop a skill, ie. to learn to perform a certain movement or action. At the beginning, the child performs the movements very clumsily, slowly and ineptly. At the same time, he makes unnecessary movements that not only do not help, but most often interfere with mastering the main action.

For example, when a two- or three-year-old child first grabs the spoon, at first he doesn't grab it correctly, but messes with the handle in his mouth.

Through a systematic demonstration by the adult of the correct way of using the spoon, the child learns how to hold it and bring it to his mouth.

It is very difficult for children to learn to eat independently and cleanly if the mother (nursery nurse) leaves them to do this on their own. Then they spill, dirty, waste food, remain hungry. They get used to eating independently and cleanly very slowly.

The adult's actions, which aim to form a habit in the child, must be systematic, but not painful and annoying. This is also necessary for the youngest children, even if they do not understand what is explained to them in words and actions. they feel pleasure from the adult's speech. An important feature of children's habits during the first three years is that they are perishable and very quickly fall away if they are not constantly repeated.

The unstrengthened and unconsolidated habits of children at an early age are also manifested in the fact that they are most rigid and established in the environment in which they are created. The environment affects the habit. This explains why, after most of the children in the nursery have the habits of they eat independently and cleanly, when they go to kindergarten, in the first days there, these habits fall away. And only after they get used to the new environment and setting do they recover.

Eating habits

Creating the first eating habits requires a lot of attention from the nurse in the nursery. These habits are very important because they are a condition for a good appetite and good health of the child, and they are also the basis for the formation of cultural behavior.

What should be paid special attention to?

It is important to teach the child good hygiene habits from the very beginning - he will remember that eating begins when his hands are washed, a napkin is placed on him and the table is well arranged. We can teach a three-year-old child to eat slowly and cleanly , to tell us if he likes the food and to ask for help if he is having trouble.

First of all, the child must learn from the end of the first year to eat at the table, only at the designated meal times, in a clean, beautiful and quiet environment, without distracting and diverting his attention with side effects. The child must get used to to eat neither very quickly nor very slowly, learning to actively take in the food, chewing and swallowing it without keeping it in the mouth for long. He must learn to eat with a spoon, holding it with his right hand, and the bread - in the left hand, to put a napkin so as not to get dirty. Not to talk. From the age of one and a half to two years, the child must finally form the habit of eating independently and cleanly.

Goals and tasks in the daily diet

An important place in the daily regime of the children in the nursery is nutrition. The tasks I set for myself to form proper eating habits in the children are:

• To teach children through demonstration and games to wash their hands before each meal

• Through observation, demonstration, play techniques, to introduce children to eating utensils

• To teach children to hold the spoon correctly and use it

• To teach children to drink water from a glass

• To teach children to use a napkin during and after each meal

• To teach children not to push each other when sitting and not to talk at the table

 

"Proper and healthy nutrition for children from 1 to 3 years old",

One of the main tasks in it is to study the level of health knowledge of parents whose children attend nurseries in matters of healthy nutrition.

Through a questionnaire prepared for the purpose, we assessed the nutrition of the children in their homes. A total of 21 parents were interviewed. We covered more than 70% of parents. The survey contained questions about the family's diet and eating habits in the evenings, on weekends and holidays.

Having correctly defined the meal, which includes a cooked dish, salad and fruit. Relatively correct - who has only a dish, no salad or a cake is included. Wrong - with an abundance of fried foods, very sweet and pasta foods, carbonated drinks, without fresh fruits and vegetables. Indeterminate - when no information about the child's food can be derived from the parent's response. For a proper breakfast meal, we defined that which includes milk and/or breakfast cereal.

The first question in the survey card is "What did the child have for dinner last night?", and our request to the parents was to list absolutely all the foods consumed by the child after picking him up from the daycare. The largest part of children eat relatively correctly - 61%, only 26% eat correctly, 12% - incorrectly.

When asked what the child usually eats for dinner, 66% of parents described a relatively correct meal, 16% - correctly, 7% incorrectly, and 12% could not determine the type of meal. We see that the proportion of children who eat properly at dinner has decreased by 10 points. This is probably due to the fact that the parents did not consider it necessary to list all the foods that the child consumed in the evening.

There are several answers to the question of dinner time:

The majority of children - 70%, have dinner between 6 - 7 p.m., which is quite correct. Every third (29%) child eats later in the evening (from 19:30 to 22:00), which is outside the correct feeding time. 1% of parents answered "other" ("dinner twice", "different", etc.).

On the days when the child has breakfast at home, again the majority of the children are fed relatively well - this applies to two thirds of them or 74%. Only 22% of children eat breakfast correctly, 3% incorrectly, and 1% cannot determine. Only one in three children (34%) eat breakfast between 7 and 9 on weekends or at the correct time. Two-thirds of parents serve breakfast to their children at a later time - between 9:30 and 11:30, which is not good for children. For 1% of the children, it was answered with something else ("different", "when he wakes up", etc.).

Two-thirds of children (73%) eat lunch between 11:30 and 13:00, which is correct. For 16% of children, lunch is between 1.30pm and 4pm, which is late for lunch at this age. For 1% of the children, something else was noted.

On weekends, over two-thirds of children (71%) eat relatively well at lunch, 15% eat well, 4% eat poorly, and 10% cannot determine.

According to the parents' own judgment, of the studied children, 4% were overweight, 5% were underweight, 88% were normal, and the remaining 3% did not give an answer.

The following addictions were found in overweight children:

 

• The majority of them eat properly, but at a later time. And eating later at dinner, lunch, or breakfast is a factor causing their weight to increase.

• There are also overweight children who eat incorrectly but at the right time, but they are fewer.

PREMIUM CHAPTERS ▼

Teaching methods (PREMIUM)

In order to build a "clean eating" habit, I visited and taught a group of eleven children from a nursery between the ages of one year and six months and two years. To achieve the tasks I set above, I used the pedagogical method, which is considered as unity of training and education methods, as a method applied everywhere in educational work.

Teaching methods are certain methods of interaction in the activity of teachers and students, aimed at mastering knowledge, forming skills and habits, developing abilities. 

Methods of oral communication - explanation and narration (PREMIUM)

Through this method, I introduced the children to eating utensils. For this purpose, I used a demonstration of the actions to achieve the main task - building the habit of "clean eating". The sense of play also played an important role in my work.

To solve the task of "washing the children's hands" before and after eating, I used the following game technique. The first step is to put a bib on each child, then in the form of a game I take them to the washrooms. In this situation, I use the game "on a train" .Then the Bear doll comes to my rescue. With the question to the children:

- What should we do before we sit down to eat?

- Bear, the children will show you how they always wash their hands before eating

 

Finger play follows / hand washing-like movements /

 

"I can do it myself"

I love cleanliness right hand "shake"

and I am friends with water!

Who wants to be healthy /both hands bent at the elbows/

must be washed /show "muscles"/

with soap and water /movements similar to washing hands/

his hands to rub!

In order for them to wash their hands with pleasure and regularly before and after meals, the water must be at a temperature that is pleasant for the child's skin. The sinks must be placed at such a level that the children are maximally facilitated in performing this activity. From the observations me, I found that after repeatedly performing the task according to the described method, the children perform it with increasing desire and pleasure.

To fulfill my second task, I used the puppet corner where the doll Mimi invites her friends to a delicious lunch. Through her actions, I show how the table is set with a clean tablecloth and the cutlery is arranged. During the demonstration, I repeat several times the correct names of "fork" , "spoon", "plate", "pan", "cup" and I explain the use of each of the utensils during meals.

During my time in the nursery, I noticed how several of the children had retreated to the children's doll area and were playing with the food set from the doll area, trying to recreate the demonstration done earlier by me "Serving" food to their dolls , laid the table with a clean cloth instead of a tablecloth and imitated washing hands.

Conclusion: 60% of the children remembered and correctly repeated the names of the utensils we use during meals, and the remaining 40% did satisfactorily, as I find the reason in the less developed speech of children of this age. In the way of direct imitation, through the game, children strive to reach the desired correct movements with hands showing washing.

The correct arrangement of the table creates a calm environment and sharpens the child's appetite.

Building the habit of "clean eating" requires the child, who has entered a daycare center, to get used to the feeding regime, which for children from one to three years old is four times a day.

The issue of the child's appetite is closely related to the feeding regime and the organization of the feeding itself, which depends above all on observing the interval between two meals. Before that, the main concern of the nurse (educator) is that the children never let themselves they wait a long time before eating. For the child's appetite, the way in which the food is presented is also important, as well as its quantity. At this age, the child's active participation in eating has a decisive positive influence on the appetite.

To teach the children to hold the spoon correctly when feeding, I show the children how I feed the Bear doll with a spoon that I hold in my right hand. I direct the children's attention to the amount of food in the spoon, it should not be much, so as not to spill and to keep the clothes and tablecloth clean. This demonstration aims to create children's interest in spoon feeding and pleasant feelings from the action itself. This creates a desire in the children to repeat this action and I noticed that they easily mastered the spoon feeding after I had them feed the teddy bear too.

Conclusion: 80% of the children completed the task willingly and repeated this action, which led to a happy mood and positive emotions. I helped the remaining 20%, who could not cope with the task independently, by holding their hand to feed Mecho.

In the child's behavior from the beginning of the second year, there is a desire to finish everything by himself. This prompts him accordingly to try to feed himself. From this age, the child is also given an additional spoon when feeding. At the age when the child wants to hold the spoon , we give him two spoons - one in each hand. In this way, he will not only practice eating, but also will not dip his fingers in the dish. Following this approach at one year and six months, the child is already able to feed himself, although not very clean.

Another task I set for myself in connection with the "clean eating" habit is to teach the children to drink water from a cup. The children must acquire the skill to hold the cup properly with both hands.

A child aged 1 to 2 years, who looks suspiciously at his old cup, can be very happy with another cup with a new shape, picture and color, therefore it is recommended to change the children's cups periodically.

After the bear doll has eaten, I pour water into a cup and give him a drink. To reinforce the skill of drinking from a cup while holding it with both hands, I hand out cups from the doll corner to each child and require them to hold them correctly.

Conclusion: Children do very well with this task.

Following the sequence of the assigned tasks, I proceeded to teach the children to use a napkin during and after each meal. For this purpose, I wiped the already fed doll with a colored napkin, which grabbed the children's attention. The bright color of the napkin provoked the children to repeat the action after each meal.

In the next stage, to teach the children not to push themselves when sitting and not to talk during meals, I used the doll Bear and his two friends Rabbit and Misha, showing how they pull out their chairs and sit carefully on them. I pointed out to the children that they should eat quietly, cleanly and calmly as the dolls did.

This game piqued the children's interest in repeating the table seating movements I demonstrated through the puppets. I let everyone do this, although it takes time, because through the exercises they do the task perfectly.

Conclusion: This task should be repeated daily during meals to achieve a full result after a period of one and a half to two months.

Direct observation and demonstration method (PREMIUM)

For this method, various aids are used, such as pictures, toys, stories, audio-video, puppet theater, etc. Through this method, the activity is presented in a different way. The acquisition of new knowledge is carried out mainly with independent work of the child and casual communication with the nurse (trainer).

Conclusion: Lessons should be given in an orderly system and sequence, depending on the age characteristics and individual capabilities of the child. Children's communication with the dolls makes them more organized and executive. This gave me the opportunity and idea to play a real puppet theater for children with familiar favorite characters used in other activities as well. Behind the screen I also used other colleagues from the group to get a dialogue between the characters.

I am attaching an activity that best illustrates my views on the power and impact of puppet theater in the nursery.

Topic: "I eat right"

Goal: Awareness of health as a value and formation of the child's attitude towards it.

Tasks:

1. For the child to understand the importance of nutrition to strengthen his health.

2. Consolidation of children's knowledge about the purpose of eating utensils.

3. Cultivating skills for applying nutrition norms: not to waste food; to observe food etiquette.

 

 

In order to build the habit of "clean eating", children must be worked with very carefully. In early childhood, all habits are built with the conscious efforts of the teacher through repeated explanations and demonstrations, persistent demand for improvement and automation of individual skills and systematic control over actions them

The means of training are very specific. The methods and techniques are also specific and are mainly applied in the game approach. Learning is entirely in the game and gradually work is done to complete the habits.

When creating a "clean eating" habit, it is important for the child to be intrigued. The teacher must skillfully arouse the child's interest and desire to complete the tasks. Without such activity, the "clean eating" habit is difficult to create.

The child must understand what he has to do and why he is doing it. The tasks are set with the help of plot-game methods, interesting objects, aesthetic surroundings and other highly impressive stimuli. The tasks should not be done suddenly and quickly. at an early age, they adjust slowly and with difficulty from one type of activity to another. It takes time for children to perceive and understand the tasks.

The skill and habit of "clean eating" is built with the help of long-term exercises - not in a day or two. During early childhood, even a little more time is needed, because during this age the importance is not so much awareness and understanding of the tasks as the imitation of the sister (the trainer).

The correct and timely formation of the habit of "clean eating" requires a precise and beautiful execution of the actions by the nurse. Initially, the children must see the execution of all the actions included in the habit in a complete form. This gives them an idea of ​​what they will have to do.

The skill of building the habit of "clean eating" is built slowly and continuously, with the help of the nurse, and only by the end of the third year is the child able to eat cleanly without soiling the tablecloth and clothes. The nurse must show a certain tolerance, persistence, to encourage even the smallest achievements of children. To provide an aesthetic environment and set a personal example of cultural nutrition. Unsystematic requirements, violence and harsh treatment of children create an aversion to nutrition and do not lead to the construction of an independent and "clean meal"

An important role in learning the habits of children in a nursery is the interaction of the nursery with the family.

The family is an important educational institution, and the mother and father are the natural teachers of their children. Parents influence the development of the child's personality with their knowledge, system of values ​​and behavior patterns. This necessitates the need to search for new ways of permanent and effective contact with the child's relatives.

The success of any educational program largely depends on the inclusion of parents in nursery life on the basis of partnership and cooperation.

This means to attract and recognize the help of parents as immediate participants in the day-to-day life of the nursery. Surveys with parents, open days for visits, celebrations or parent meetings. These forms of work, of course, have their importance, but their effect can be multiplied if the child's relatives become assistants to the teacher from being spectators, if they themselves become a source of ideas, knowledge, and experience, receiving information.

All this is very important both for the parents and for the teacher, but especially for the children in learning and strengthening the habit of "clean eating"