Let’s Go! 5210 Goes to Child Care
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Searsport Head Start, Searsport, ME

Submitted by Carole Hallundbaek, HMP Program Specialist at Healthy Waldo County

The Searsport Head Start has done “a ton of stuff” in putting the 5210 Let’s Go Waldo! message into action. Cher Jones, the center’s cook, is enormously creative, consistently demonstrating healthy choices through fun meals and projects. Emphasizing fruits and veggies, the kids have planted an herb box, “so they could smell and touch them,” and planted containers of lettuce, radishes, carrots, tomatoes, zucchini, mints and chives to use in their kitchen. Smoothies made of yogurt and fruit are a morning favorite, and children participate in what they’d like to add to their healthy cereal. Vegetables are an alphabet game to solve (one day they all begin with ‘C’). The center promotes physical activity through I Am Moving, I Am Learning, basketball, obstacle courses, and more. Each week a Family Pack goes home, sharing news and goals with parents.

Here at the Searsport Head Start, 5-2-1-0 is a huge piece of what we do every day without even thinking about it. Children get a minimum of 2 servings of fruit at breakfast and 1 fruit and 1 vegetable at lunch. We do not engage in any recreational screen time. We’re too busy having fun! We incorporate at least one hour of physical activity into the curriculum each day by providing music & movement activities, large motor group games such as “Duck, Duck Goose” and 45 minutes of outside time. When the weather does not allow us to play outdoors we access the large motor room, parade around the center and get creative in the classroom to make sure we get lots of exercise. 100% fruit juice is served along with water and low fat milk at breakfast, low fat milk and water are served at lunch and if a child gets thirsty we offer them water to drink throughout the day.

- Donna Nielson, Searsport Head Start Site Manager