2016 Child Care Strategy Updates

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Changing the trends for our youth.

Kids are eating out more and consuming more foods high in sugar and saturated fats while not getting enough physical activity. Since most young people spend much of their days in child care and school settings, SHIP sees an opportunity to reach many young people by working with schools and child care providers in Wabasha County on healthy eating and physical activity strategies.

Up to 3,538 youth have been positively affected through our 37 child care and school partner sites who are committed to providing healthy options to our youth.

Making it part of their day.

With SHIP's support, schools are making big change through initiatives in farm-to-school, school-based agriculture, and healthy snack carts. Students are relishing in the opportunity to try healthy foods that are locally grown and sometimes even grown by them. One area school has seen great success.

Lake City School District has implemented healthy snack carts with a 70 percent participation rate. Healthy options include fruit, vegetables, yogurt, cheese sticks and whole grain snacks crackers.

“This is a part of the school district's effort to focus on wellness and to make it easier for students to choose healthy options at school instead of bringing in unhealthy snacks from home. This also helped us to have more uniform snack options for students as there was a wide range of ideas of what should be available.”
Johanna Majerus, Lake City school nurse

Child care providers using SHIP provided tools.

Twenty-nine child care providers have partnered with SHIP on healthy eating, physical activity and support for breastfeeding.  SHIP is working with these providers to create action plans and to provide healthy eating and physical activity curriculum and tools that can be used at their facilities. The children are having fun while making healthy choices part of their every day! 

Our youth are sharing the message. 

A staff member from Roots to Wings Learning Center recently told this story:

“I received a text from a parent explaining her child's birthday treat she was sending to school the next day. She told me she had taken her daughter to the store to pick out something from the bakery to bring to school for her birthday but her daughter insisted she could not bring cookies or cupcakes because those were "sometimes‟ foods and she should bring a healthy treat. The little girl decided watermelon would be a great birthday treat, and so we had watermelon cubes for her birthday! I was very excited she had listened so carefully to our health lessons and was able to apply them to her life.”